Not Going Anywhere
by hmweasley
Summary: Tonks has been proving herself since she first revealed that she'd be an Auror only to be faced by sceptical classmates. Years later, a full-fledged Auror, she's supposed to be past that, but joining the Order of the Phoenix is another reminder of just how inexperienced she still is. Luckily, she's not ready to give up yet.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985, HufflepuffBanana, and noraborealis for beta reading this chapter.**

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"This is Number 12 Grimmauld Place?" Tonks asked, staring at the building that materialized across the street, squeezed between numbers eleven and thirteen as if it had always been there. Somehow, it looked even older than the buildings that sandwiched it.

"Quiet," Moody growled. "Do you want all of London to hear you?"

He hurried across the street without looking back, forcing Tonks to scurry after him with only a quick glance up at the house and its dirt-coated windows as they approached. She still couldn't believe she'd been invited to join the Order of the Phoenix. She wasn't going to waste the opportunity by getting locked out if the building disappeared again.

Moody tugged the door open with ease as if there were no further safeguards to keep intruders out.

"Stay quiet until we're downstairs," he said in a low voice. "Not everything in this house is happy we're here."

He stepped inside before Tonks could ask for an explanation. She followed, her head snapping back and forth as she tried to take in every aspect of her surroundings. Everything was in dark colours and elaborately decorated. She couldn't make out much more of that before the door shut behind them, leaving them in the dark. Farther down the hall, one lone lighting fixture hung from the ceiling, but it did little to dissipate the darkness that had permeated every crevice of the building.

A million questions raced through Tonks' head. Whose house were they in? How had it come into the Order's possession? Who could possibly be there who didn't like the Order? Were they keeping prisoners? A shiver of unease travelled down her spine, but she knew better than to ask questions when she'd been told to stay quiet.

Velvet wallpaper lined the walls, some of it peeling in odd places. Tonks was fascinated by it and didn't notice the clawed umbrella stand until it was too late.

She tumbled over, the umbrella stand clanging against the hardwood floor beneath it. The sound made her cringe before she'd even hit the ground. She landed on her hip with a hiss. The spot was sure to bruise.

Screeching filled the air. It took Tonks several seconds to make out the words in the screams.

"Filth! Scum! How dare you defile the house of my family!"

Looking up for the source of the noise, Tonks saw Moody and another man struggling to shut a set of curtains over a portrait of a figure that looked more like a Muggle zombie than a living woman. It took Tonks a moment of staring at the at the painting to realize that it was the figure who was making all the noise.

They'd just managed to shut the curtains over the painting—a few muffled wails still escaping—when Tonks made it back to her feet. The man she didn't know approached her, giving her a sheepish smile as if he'd been responsible for the screeching himself.

"Sorry about that. We can't get rid of her. Merlin knows we've tried, but she charmed herself to the wall while she was alive. She had no intention of leaving this place. My name's Remus Lupin by the way. Alastor told us that you prefer to go by Tonks?"

Remus held out a hand, but for several seconds, all Tonks could do was blink back at him. The man in front of her looked exhausted, and Tonks got the sense that the exhaustion ran deeper than one night of bad sleep.

Scars dotted his face and made him look ragged. Tonks didn't trust herself to guess his age, afraid she'd label him older than he was.

According to commonly accepted standards, he wasn't attractive, yet something about him drew Tonks in. It might have been the kindness in his eyes as he held out his hand to her. She took it, trying to ignore the way her heart skipped a beat when they touched.

"Uh, yeah," she said, shaking her head to get rid of the fog. "My first name is mortifying. Everyone knows straight away that Mum is a pureblood."

Moody had disappeared during the commotion caused by the portrait, apparently not worried about her finding the meeting. That must have meant Remus was one of the members he trusted. She knew that wouldn't be the case with everyone. Moody had always been selective when it came to where to place his trust.

"The meeting will be down in the kitchen," Remus said. "It's this way."

He motioned towards a set of stairs at the other end of the hall that descended into the ground.

They'd taken several steps towards them when the door to the house opened. Turning to find the source of the noise, Tonks saw her former Potions professor standing in the doorway, and her stomach sank. He'd been her least favourite professor at Hogwarts. She'd never have expected him to be a member of the Order. Realizing that she was gaping, she snapped her mouth shut.

Snape frowned at the umbrella stand as he stepped carefully over it. He had taken several steps down the hall when he looked up and noticed Tonks and Remus for the first time. His sour expression deepened.

"Nymphadora Tonks," he said in a low voice, apparently aware of how the portrait responded to any disturbances. "Is Dumbledore desperate enough for help that he'll ask a woman who can't stand still without knocking over an entire shelf of potions ingredients?"

While Tonks wasn't easily embarrassed in most situations, her cheeks warmed at the reminder of her biggest classroom mishap. It had nearly cost her a spot in N.E.W.T.-level Potions and, with that, her position in Auror training.

Not used to being able to talk back to her former professor without facing a detention, she couldn't come up with a decent response.

"We're happy to receive anyone willing to help, Severus," Remus said. "Alastor says that Tonks is the most promising Auror to join the department in at least a decade. No doubt she'll be of tremendous help."

Tonks tried to hold back a smile at what Moody had been saying behind her back. At the same time, fear crept up her throat again at the thought of not living up to expectations. She was sure she wouldn't in Snape's eyes.

Her former professor scowled but didn't comment on Tonks' abilities, which he had loved to denigrate while she was at school. He stalked past them and down the short staircase to the kitchen. Tonks let out a long exhale the moment he was out of sight.

"I didn't expect to see him here," she said quietly. "When I was a student, there were a lot of rumours that he was a Death Eater himself."

She realized the second the words were out of her mouth that they might have been enough to cause anger. For all she knew, Remus and Snape were friends. But Remus laughed.

"You wouldn't be alone in thinking that," he admitted. "Everyone is surprised at first, but Severus is a trusted member of the Order. You'll learn this all shortly, as I'm sure he has an update for us, but he _is_ a Death Eater. He's our spy. A lot of our most valuable information comes from him."

Tonks digested that piece of information. It was even harder to believe than Snape simply being a member of the Order.

"You're questioning his loyalty," Remus said, snapping her out of her thoughts.

She wasn't sure how to respond, but Remus beat her to it.

"Again, you're not alone," he said with a small smile. "Plenty of people here don't trust Severus as much as Dumbledore does, but Dumbledore _does_ trust him. He's reassured everyone of that."

Tonks gave a short nod.

"It's not like it's my place to say anything," she said. "I just got here."

Remus gave a short laugh but quickly quelled it after a glance at the portrait that was now murmuring to itself in a low voice that Tonks couldn't make out.

"The meeting will start soon," Remus said.

He motioned towards the kitchen, and Tonks followed him. As they got closer to the door of no return, she couldn't help but talk to keep her nerves at bay.

"Do you know Snape well?" she asked.

She couldn't imagine a man who seemed as kind as Remus being friends with a man like Snape, but she'd also learned that some friendships were beyond the scope of outsiders' understanding.

Remus sighed before he answered, a mix of emotions passing across his face that Tonks found difficult to work out.

"I wouldn't say I know him well, but we went to school together. I've known him for many years at least."

Tonks paused in her footsteps, watching Remus' back as he continued towards the kitchen. She took in the new information about his age, filing it away in her mind. She felt momentarily guilty that she'd expected him to be older than Snape. Now that she knew differently, she could better understand how worn the years had made him. It raised more questions than it answered.

They reached the kitchen door, and Remus paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"Are you ready?" he asked. "I know it can be overwhelming the first time around."

She gave him the confident smirk she'd perfected since joining the Ministry, able to pull it out whenever she needed to give herself or others reassurance of her own competence.

"I'm fine. It can't be worse than Auror training, right?"

His smile widened, but she got the sense that he was humouring her more than anything else.

"I suppose not," he said.

With that, he pushed the door to the kitchen open.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 and HufflepuffBanana for beta reading this chapter.**

**Word count: 1,182**

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The room was abuzz with conversation as Tonks followed Remus inside. Her eyes scanned the people gathered eagerly, looking out for familiar faces. She was struck by how many she found.

Kingsley was the only other member of the Auror Department she could spot, which was a bit of a disappointment. She'd been holding out hope that more than just a few of them had taken notice of the truth. That was what they were meant to do after all.

She hadn't been expecting to see so many of her former Hogwarts professors. Though once she saw them, she wasn't sure why she was surprised. It was Dumbledore who had assembled this group after all, and she'd known that his teachers were loyal to him since she was a student. Seeing McGonagall and Flitwick chatting wasn't a shock to her system.

Tonks ambled behind Remus at an increasing distance, slowing her steps. There was no reason to believe that she should sit beside him. He had friends here, unlike her. But Tonks had no idea where else to go. The sudden shyness she felt was entirely unlike her, but it nearly paralyzed her as she realized that she was one of the youngest in a room of people experienced with magic.

Her eyes were drawn back to Remus as he sat down. Her heart skipped a beat to see an empty chair beside him, but it plummeted a second later when she saw who sat across from him: Sirius Black.

Tonks hadn't seen her cousin in person since she was a toddler, but she was more than familiar with his face. Kingsley's office alone was plastered with his wanted posters. Tonks' gaze flickered back to the other Auror to find him watching her with a grin on his lips, apparently unbothered by the escaped convict's presence.

"Tonks," Sirius said, sounding relieved with the name. He smiled widely and stood, reaching a hand out across the table to shake hers. She took it, too stunned to do anything else and aware of several sets of eyes on her.

"It's nice to see you again," Sirius continued.

There was enough genuineness in his voice that Tonks felt a tug at her heart strings despite the years she'd spent hating the thought of Sirius Black.

"You must be wondering why I'm here," he said with a short laugh.

She could only nod in response. She pressed her jaw tight to avoid gaping at him like an idiot. It hadn't escaped her that she was the only one present who didn't understand why he was there.

"I was framed for murder," Sirius said, tilting his head back with laughter that made Tonks' stomach twist uncomfortably. "It was Peter Pettigrew who was the traitor. He framed me for murder. When I got out, Dumbledore learned the truth, and now here we are, in my family's old house."

The short version of events raised more questions for Tonks than it answered, but so many potential questions ran through her head that she couldn't decide on one before Sirius was leaning across the table and speaking again.

"How is your mother? I haven't spoken to Andromeda in," he swallowed as he counted the years, "nearly fifteen years."

"She's good," Tonks said, voice cracking in wonder.

She tried not to get lost in speculation about how her mother would react to knowing that her cousin wasn't a murderer after all and was even a member of the Order of the Phoenix.

Her own question was on her lips when the door opened and the kitchen instantly quieted. Tonks' eyes tracked Albus Dumbledore as he came to stand at the head of the table. He didn't bother to call them to order before inclining his head and offering a small smile in greeting.

"Good evening," he said. "Thank you all for coming tonight. Unfortunately, I have some business to attend to that will necessitate this meeting being a short one. But first, I want to introduce our newest member: Nymphadora Tonks. Who, if I remember correctly, prefers to go by Tonks only."

Tonks inclined her head in acknowledgment, offering the room a slight wave. She was careful to keep her shoulders straight.

"Tonks is an Auror and comes highly recommended by both Auror Moody and Auror Shacklebolt. No doubt she will be a fine addition to our cause."

Tonks couldn't help but smile back at Dumbledore, though she remained aware of the eyes of everyone else in the room on her.

"Now," Dumbledore continued, clapping his hands together, "Remus has just returned from a visit to the werewolves outside of Truro. What information do you have for us, Remus?"

Tonks held her breath as Remus stood, her eyes narrowed. If he was really a liason of sorts to the werewolves, that could have explained his scars, but such wounds would have meant getting very close and personal with them. It would only make sense if…

Tonks bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to prevent herself from voicing the question in front of the entire room. She was sure she had deduced the truth, and not being able to confirm it itched at her brain as Remus began to speak.

"Just as with every other group I've spoken to, they say that a supporter of Voldemort came before I did. They expressed interest in his offer, which was the same as all of the others we've heard of so far. They, too, are convinced that he could help them in their plight. They're mesmerized by the fact that he sees them as valuable, particularly in ridding the area of Muggles."

Dumbledore hummed in acknowledgement.

"That is what I feared," he said quietly before allowing Remus to continue.

"However, this group lives more isolated from the Ministry than other groups I've visited. They have only the vaguest sense of what the Ministry laws applicable to werewolves are. Mostly, they live without mingling with the witches and wizards of the area. I think that could work to our advantage. They don't have as many ingrained beliefs that all of wizardkind is against them.

"I plan on going back in another week. There's a chance they could be persuaded to stay away from Voldemort if I can explain to them further how he would ultimately harm them."

"Thank you, Remus," Dumbledore said as the man in question sat down. "I have faith in your ability to help them see the truth. All of us here know that Voldemort would only bring them greater pain than what they've already experienced. I look forward to hearing about your return visit at our next meeting."

Tonks kept glancing at Remus from the corner of her eye before snapping her gaze firmly back on Dumbledore at the head of the room. For the rest of the meeting, she found it nearly impossible to focus. In her lap, she kept her hands clutched tightly, fighting against the questions threatening to break free.

There was a time and a place for them, but that time hadn't quite come.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: This is getting posted on my phone from the app while on a train, so I massively apologize for any strange formatting. Big thank you again to DarylDixon'sgirl1985, HufflepuffBanana, and noraborealis for beta reading.**

**Word count: 1,454**

When the meeting came to an end, Tonks remained in her seat, eyes glancing around at people as they got up from the table and moved around. Some, such as Snape, fled the kitchen immediately, much to Tonks' relief.

Many of her former professors left quickly as well, which she couldn't complain about. Flitwick had always been a cheerful guy, but Tonks didn't know how to navigate a casual situation where they were supposed to be equals.

Others stayed in the kitchen and began to mingle amongst each other. Tonks' gaze traveled over them and tried to discern who she could talk to.

Bill Weasley was a familiar face, but he seemed absorbed in a conversation with a man Tonks didn't know. If they hadn't been wearing such serious expressions, she would have interrupted them, but she knew it likely had to do with the war.

"Hectic, isn't it?"

At the sound of his voice, Tonks turned back to Sirius, who was leaning back in his chair. There was a small smile on his lips that Tonks had trouble reconciling with the prisoner photo she'd become accustomed to seeing around the Ministry and elsewhere.

"I guess," she said slowly.

"It's not usually like this," Sirius continued. "The rest of the house is dark and dreary. I look forward to these meetings. They're the only time I don't feel bored out of my mind."

"You have plenty of company," Remus said.

Tonks' senses heightened as she turned back to the mysterious man beside her. He had his head tilted to the side, and there was a small grin on his lips as he watched Sirius. Though his gaze didn't leave his friend, his next words were clearly for Tonks.

"The Weasleys are living here as well. He's not as alone as he'll try to convince you he is."

The two men shared a look that made Tonks press her lips together. She refused to believe that what she was feeling was jealousy when she had known Remus Lupin existed for little more than an hour. Of course these two would know each other far better than either of them knew her.

"It's just not the same, Remus," Sirius said, fondness leaking its way into his voice.

He turned away from Remus to look at Tonks instead.

"Are you staying for dinner?" he asked, tossing his head towards the stove where Molly Weasley was stirring something in a large pot. "Molly always tries to get people to stick around. You're fresh blood, so she'll throw a fit if you leave."

"She's a nice woman," Remus said gently. "She'll make sure you eat more than enough before she lets you go."

Tonks smiled at the thought. Molly hadn't spoken much during the meeting, but watching her in the kitchen seemed to be watching her in her zone. She managed everything around her with ease, ordering around those who had volunteered to help with practiced ease.

"I'll stay," she said, giving a slight shrug as if she'd briefly considered otherwise.

The only food awaiting her at home would be some instant Muggle noodles that she'd bought at the supermarket the day before. Her cooking skills weren't the best, and with her busy schedule, she'd made little effort to improve since moving out on her own. The smell of a home cooked meal was already permeating the kitchen, and it made Tonks' mouth water.

"Great," Sirius exclaimed in a booming voice.

"He's been looking forward to seeing you since Moody said he was bringing you," Remus whispered in her ear, making Tonks fight against the urge to squirm.

Despite his low voice, Sirius tossed him a short, annoyed look before he continued speaking.

"It's not everyday that you find out your little cousin has gone and become an Auror. An Auror!" He let out a loud laugh, leaning back in his chair. "I'd have hoped that Andromeda raised you better than to join the Ministry."

Her cheeks warmed. She was used to defending her choice of profession, but the criticisms weren't usually from a place of hating the government.

"I wanted to do something worthwhile. Taking bad guys off the streets seemed like the best way to do that. I know it's not perfect. If I thought otherwise, I wouldn't be here, would I? But I'd like to think we're doing some good in the world."

Sirius shook his head, a faraway look in his eyes.

"Maybe you can help make it better," he said.

Despite his words, Tonks caught the slight quiver of his voice that hinted he believed otherwise. Her stomach twisted with unease.

"How did you get out?" she asked quietly.

Her fists clenched in her lap as she waited for an angry outburst, but Sirius only smirked at her, shaking his head as if he couldn't believe the story himself.

"I'm an Animagus," he admitted, nodding at Tonks' gasp of surprise. "Me, Peter, and James all went through the process in school so we could be with Remus here during the full moon."

Tonks' eyes briefly glanced at Remus, who nodded, before snapping back to Sirius.

"Dementors only feed on humans, see? So, whenever I turned into a dog, they didn't affect me as much. That kept me sane for the twelve years I was there, but they don't exactly give you three square meals a day in Azkaban. I lost so much weight that as a dog I was able to slip through the bars. The Dementors were none the wiser."

"Incredible," Tonks said in a low breath. "And you're innocent?" Her eyes narrowed. "You said that Peter Pettigrew framed you, but I don't understand how he could have done that."

Again, there was laughter when she'd half expected anger. She leaned against the table in her eagerness to better understand. When she'd arrived at the meeting, she hadn't expected to receive answers to one of the biggest mysteries plaguing the Auror department since she'd joined.

"Pettigrew is a Death Eater," Remus said, taking over for his friend. "He was the one who betrayed us during the last war. He told Voldemort where James and Lily were hiding. The four of them—James, Lily, Peter, and Sirius—made Peter secret keeper at the last minute, without telling any of us. So, when Peter framed Sirius, it was so easy for us to accept it as the truth."

"Probably the stupidest idea I've ever had," Sirius muttered, looking at the spot high up on the wall.

"And he's had plenty of those," Remus retorted with a roll of his eyes.

Tonks laughed freely for the first time since she'd entered the house, feeling a weight begin to rise from her shoulders.

"Thank you for sharing my most redeeming qualities, Moony," Sirius said with a smirk. "We all know that you're far too intelligent to hang out with the likes of me."

Remus shook his head but didn't otherwise answer. Molly had chosen that moment to begin transporting dishes to the table, and the men were quickly recruited to help, though Tonks' offers were shooed off with the excuse of her being a guest. Nevermind that most in the room didn't live in the house.

There was more laughter during the meal than Tonks had expected. The Weasley children and Hermione Granger filtered in, leaving all talk of sombre Order business pushed aside. Tonks listened to Remus and Sirius recount stories of their Hogwarts days with a fascination she hadn't known she possessed.

As the meal came to a close, Tonks struggled to keep a frown off her face as she thought about her quiet little apartment.

"You can stay as long as you want," Sirius said as if he sensed her reluctance to leave. "Technically, you're a Black too anyway. If you have any morbid curiosity about the house, feel free to explore. Fair warning though: it may shatter any positive notions you've held onto about our prestigious relatives."

Tonks smirked.

"I don't think I have any of those. Maybe I haven't met them like you have, but I know what the likes of Bellatrix Lestrange are capable of."

Sirius gave her a small smile but didn't say anything further. Tonks tapped her fingers against the wood as she considered her options. She'd have been lying if she didn't admit that she was curious about the house. Exploring had always been fun for her, and a house such as Grimmauld Place, with its dark corners and elaborate decoration, was the ultimate prize. The fact that she was related to the people who had constructed it made little difference in its draw.

"I may stay for a while," she said quietly. "There's nowhere else I need to be."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 and HufflepuffBanana for beta reading.**

**Word count: 3,271**

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Tonks itched to stay and speak with Sirius and Remus. She had so many questions, both about the Order and their lives beyond it. With the war likely only beginning, she had no idea when she'd be able to ask them again.

But she was self-conscious about bombarding them with questions when they hardly knew each other. Most likely, they wouldn't be as enthusiastic about answering as Tonks was about asking, and the last thing she wanted was to come across as an overeager child who couldn't stop pestering the adults. Her age weighed heavily on her mind as she scanned the kitchen and noted the years of experience many of the others had compared to her.

Sure, there were a couple of people not much older than she was. Bill Weasley, who she remembered from Hogwarts, was chatting with his father and a man Tonks didn't know who looked as if he hadn't had a proper night's sleep in ages Still, Bill was surrounded by family, an advantage Tonks didn't have herself as Sirius hardly counted as such.

After adjusting to life in the Auror Office, she'd never expected to feel like a new recruit again. She loathed it even more the second time around.

Needing to escape the kitchen, where the warm air was beginning to feel stifling, she excused herself and set off up the staircase to the parts of the house she had yet to explore. It was clear which parts of the house had once been for the family and visitors as opposed to the house elves. The rest of the house was nothing like the sparsely decorated kitchen below. With most of the house's current occupants still gathered around the kitchen table, Tonks let herself inspect every aspect of the interior of the entrance hall as she headed for the set of stairs that would take her to the upper floors.

Though her steps sometimes sent up puffs of dust from the carpet, the former grandeur of the decor couldn't be ignored. Her mother's voice echoed in her mind. Tonks had once rolled her eyes when her mother spoke of her relatives because they couldn't be as gaudy as Andromeda implied. After all, Tonks had seen what Bellatrix Lestrange looked like when she was shipped off to Azkaban for life. The images from the _Prophet_ were forever seared into her memories. Any shreds of dignity the woman had possessed were long gone.

Tonks shouldn't have been sceptical though. She also knew what the Malfoys were like, and Narcissa was as much of a Black as Bellatrix was. Though she had never seen Malfoy Manor for herself, Tonks could easily imagine that it was a cleaner version of Grimmauld Place or worse.

If she were to hazard a guess, though, the Malfoys wouldn't have gone as far as mounting house elf heads to their walls. Tonks averted her eyes from the decorations in question as she travelled upwards.

On the first landing, she heard two voices drifting through a cracked doorway. Tonks stuck her head in, eyes landing on Ginny Weasley and Hermione Granger sitting on a sofa in front of an empty fireplace.

She'd seen them at dinner, but they'd been at opposite sides of the table, which had prevented them from speaking to one another. Tonks regretted that, as she was curious about the teenagers who were good friends of the famous Harry Potter. It wasn't every day you met people like that, though Tonks supposed that not having met the Boy Who Lived was another way she was in the minority when it came to the Order.

Stepping fully into the room, her eyes trailed over the decor as they had in the entrance hall. The far wall consisted of a set of large windows that Tonks knew, despite the curtains being drawn, looked over the London street below. The sofa and chairs that sat in the room were covered in a dark green velvet that Tonks would have expected to find in the Slytherin common room. But the most curious objects were the unidentifiable ones that lined two large cabinets against the far wall and a tapestry that Tonks could tell from one glance was a family tree.

Tonks felt like she'd been dropped into a Gothic horror novel, but the furniture wasn't as interesting as the two girls watching her with curious eyes.

"Does this place creep you out?" Tonks asked, not bothering with introductions. They'd learned her name during dinner when she'd learned theirs.

"It is a little dark in here," Hermione said hesitantly, though her frown hinted at stronger feelings.

"I think this place is kind of neat," Ginny said with a smile.

Tonks gave a short laugh. There was an infectious energy within the youngest Weasley that made Tonks like her instantly.

"If we were at the Burrow all summer," Ginny continued, "we wouldn't know a thing about what was going on. I'd much rather be here exploring a house that's probably older than the Statute of Secrecy. Merlin knows how illegal some of the stuff in here is."

Tonks doubted the house was that old only because London wouldn't have held many townhouses at the time the Statute was written. She wouldn't have been surprised, however, if Grimmauld Place had been one of the first such houses to be built in the city.

"We may be here, but we don't know a thing about what the Order's actually doing," Hermione pointed out. She turned to Tonks. "We're not allowed in the meetings, and none of the adults will say a word about what they talk about."

"They treat us like little kids," Ginny explained, crossing her arms against her chest. "Mum especially acts like we won't be able to handle whatever they tell us. It's like none of them remember that I've faced Tom Riddle before and survived. I'm not going to run off and cry in my room because they tell me something scary."

Tonks observed the girls in silence for a moment. Whether the Order was being forthright with information or not, she was sure the teens had got ahold of more information than they were letting on to Tonks. That night's dinner had proven that they were more than capable of such feats, especially with the help of the twins, who Tonks knew were capable of impressive magic after seeing some of their sweets in action.

Tonks didn't push for their illicitly obtained secrets.

"I don't know much yet either," she said instead.

She sat in a chair adjacent to the sofa Ginny and Hermione had claimed. It was every bit as uncomfortable as it appeared, with a back that forced her to keep proper posture.

"Being in the Order is like joining the Auror Office all over again," Tonks continued. "Everyone except you knows what's going on, and they're all too busy to stop and fill you in on everything. It sucks."

"Yeah," Ginny said with a wry smile. "But the difference is that they'll tell you anything you want if you ask, won't they? Mum won't let us on the ground floor during meetings in case we hear something through the door."

Tonks had heard stories about what happened with Ginny Weasley and the Chamber of Secrets a few years before. It had spread through the Auror Office, with many expressing frustration that the Aurors hadn't been part of the ordeal. Several stories involving Hermione had spread in a similar fashion. Her exploits with Harry Potter and Ron Weasley always made people talk at the Ministry. Few Aurors could believe that the children were still relatively unscathed.

"I wish I could tell you what I've heard," Tonks said, "but something tells me that getting on Molly Weasley's bad side isn't a good idea."

Ginny scoffed.

"She treats us like little kids," she complained again.

Her pout did nothing to prove her mother wrong, but Tonks bit her lip to keep herself from saying such a thing out loud.

"Fred and George are nearly finished with Hogwarts!" Ginny continued, throwing her head back against the couch and letting out a huff.

"To be fair, Gin," Hermione said, "you're three years younger than Fred and George. And neither of us is of age."

Ginny directed a glare at her friend, and Tonks made a mental note to never get on her bad side.

"Do you want to know what's going on or not?" Ginny asked.

"Of course I do!" Hermione exclaimed, scowling back. "I'm only saying that I get why your mum doesn't want to tell us. The Ministry hasn't even acknowledged that You-Know-Who is back yet, and look at how bad things already are."

"That doesn't mean she should talk to us like we're kids." Ginny rolled her eyes. "It doesn't make the war go away or keep us out of trouble. She acts like knowing the truth would put a larger target on our backs."

She turned to Tonks again.

"You're the only one who talks to us like we're capable of thinking," she said. "Except maybe Sirius and Lupin."

Tonks smiled at the names before she could stop herself.

"Really?" she asked. "They meet your approval?"

Ginny and Hermione shared a look as if they needed to consider the answer. Hermione's lips pressed together, but she didn't share her opinion, letting Ginny speak instead.

"I think they'd tell us whatever we wanted to know if Mum let them," Ginny said, ignoring Hermione's sceptical expression.

"Sirius is my cousin," Tonks said, not sure why it burst from her like a secret she'd been holding in.

Both girls smiled.

"We know," Hermione said. "He's been talking about you since Moody said he wanted you to join. He was excited to see you again. He kept saying that your mum was his favourite cousin growing up and that he'd always known you'd grow up into a good one."

"He never thought he'd see you again," Ginny added, her voice much softer than it had been while complaining. "He was pretty shocked when Moody mentioned you."

Hermione nodded.

"He couldn't say anything at first. Professor Lupin had to snap him out of it."

The title she'd used before Remus' name caught Tonks' attention, making her promptly forget about anything to do with Sirius.

"'Professor'?" she repeated, raising an eyebrow.

Hermione's face scrunched in frustration, and she rubbed a hand over her brow as she answered.

"Sorry. I still slip up and call him that sometimes."

"Professor Lupin used to teach us Defence at Hogwarts," Ginny added when Tonks' confusion didn't disappear. "He quit a year ago because Snape's an arsehole and threatened to tell the parents that he's a werewolf."

Tonks hummed as she filed the information away with the other curious things she'd learned about Remus Lupin in the few hours she'd known of him.

"How was he as a professor?" Tonks asked, hoping her voice didn't betray how curious she was to know the answer.

"Amazing," Hermione gushed, surprising Tonks with her passion. The younger girl leaned forward, clasping her hands together as she spoke. "He's the only decent Defence professor we've had. Quirrell was okay, I suppose, before we found out he had You-Know-Who on the back of his head, but he never wanted to answer questions. And Lockhart just wanted to talk about himself. The only worthwhile thing I learned that year was to be careful with memory charms."

"And the fake Moody last year..." Ginny added. "Barty Crouch, Jr.? He freaked me out from the beginning." She shuddered at the memory. "But Professor Lupin was the best," she concluded. "We learned loads, and he was always really cool. Everyone liked him."

"Everyone but the Slytherins," Hermione muttered.

Ginny narrowed her eyes at Hermione as if she were the one who had been rude to Remus.

"They hate everyone worth liking," she retorted.

Neither Hermione nor Tonks were inclined to argue otherwise.

"Well," said Tonks, steering the conversation in a somewhat different direction, "Remus certainly seems like a great guy from what I know about him. I can't imagine most people would easily welcome a friend back after more than a decade of believing they're a murderer."

Hermione and Ginny shared a look that told Tonks they knew a lot about that particular event.

"Harry, Ron, and I were there when they saw each other again," Hermione admitted.

Tonks raised an eyebrow, trying to figure out how three children could get themselves in such a situation. She remembered that a lot of talk in the early days of Sirius' escape from Azkaban had been about him possibly going after Harry. She'd never stopped to wonder why the focus of the search had shifted away from the boy; she'd just assumed that Kingsley had come across new evidence. And she supposed that was what had happened. That evidence had just been more ironclad than Tonks could have known.

"How did you get wrapped up in that?" Tonks asked.

She leaned forward, ready for what was sure to be an interesting story. Hermione mirrored her, pressing her elbows into her thighs. She was more eager to share the story than Tonks had expected.

"Professor Lupin taught us the same year that Sirius escaped from Azkaban," she began. "Sirius came to Hogwarts to confront Peter Pettigrew because he was hiding as Ron's pet rat Scabbers."

Tonks, who hadn't yet heard that particular detail, let out a low, involuntarily whistle at the news.

"Ron's pet…"

She shook her head. That might have been the scariest thing she'd heard all day. An apparent Death Eater living with a child while the child was none the wiser to it. It sent shivers down her spine.

"How did he know the rat was actually Pettigrew?" Tonks asked.

"Has Sirius told you yet that he's an Animagus?" Ginny piped up, eager to contribute something to the conversation.

"Yeah," Tonks said slowly, thinking back to her conversation with Sirius and Remus in the kitchen. "He turns into a dog. He mentioned that Pettigrew was one too, but I didn't know he was a rat. All I knew was that he framed Sirius somehow."

"Yep," Ginny said. "He cut off his finger before he transformed to make it look like he'd died. Sirius recognized him in a picture from the newspaper when our family went to Egypt. Scabbers was missing the same finger on one of his paws as Pettigrew. So Sirius came after him."

Hermione picked the story back up. "He dragged Ron and Scabbers—or Pettigrew really—down a passage in the Whomping Willow that leads to the Shrieking Shack. Harry and I followed. We still thought Sirius was a murderer, but then Professor Lupin came. He'd seen us on the Marauder's Map."

In response to Tonks' furrowed brow, she rushed to add, "It's a map that Sirius, Lupin, Pettigrew, and Harry's dad made while they were at Hogwarts. It shows where everyone in the castle is. So, Professor Lupin could see that Sirius was with us, _and_ he could see that Pettigrew was there too. He followed us, and long story short, we all found out the truth."

"It must've been a shock," Tonks said. "Finding out that the best friend you thought was a murderer was innocent, while the friend you thought dead was a traitor."

"He apologized that night for thinking Sirius had betrayed everyone," Hermione said, "and Sirius forgave him right away."

"Of course he did," Ginny added. "Wouldn't you be glad to have a friend again after a decade of being alone in the worst place on earth?"

Tonks hummed in agreement. In the five years she'd been out of Hogwarts, she'd already lost touch with a number of her friends from school. Even with the ones she still spoke to, their communication had become sporadic as their lives outside of Hogwarts took over. She couldn't imagine any of her friends still being around if she spent twelve years in prison, whether she was innocent or not.

"Enough about that," Ginny said. "I've never gotten to talk to an Auror before. What's it like?"

Tonks laughed.

"Isn't Moody here every week?" she asked.

That week, at least, he'd stayed for dinner, giving the youngest Weasley plenty of time to talk to him if she desired.

"Fine," Ginny said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "Technically, I have, but it's not the same. When I talk to Moody or Kingsley, they act like I'm a kid who they're humouring with answers. Moody may say stuff that makes Mum mad, but he still talks like I don't know that much. I can tell you're not like that. You're cool."

Tonks smiled, but internally, the comment stung. It was another reminder that she was closer in age to these two Hogwarts students than she was to most of the people who'd been gathered around the kitchen table at the meeting. Even with her Auror credentials, she felt like the others would focus on her inexperience more than anything else. None of that was something she planned to share with Ginny or Hermione.

"I'm glad," she said, using her Auror training to make the sentiment sound as authentic as possible. "There's a war going on. I don't think it's a good idea to belittle anyone."

The comment earned her beaming smiles from both girls, and Tonks quickly answered Ginny's original question.

"Being an Auror is everything you'd imagine it to be but with more paperwork."

"Paperwork," Ginny repeated to herself, her nose wrinkling in distaste.

"Do you want to be an Auror?" Tonks asked, settling herself further into the sofa. It had become a tad bit less uncomfortable.

Ginny hummed as she considered the idea, but a shrug quickly followed

"I don't know," she said. "It sounds cool, but so does becoming a Curse-Breaker like Bill or a Dragonologist like Charlie. But I'm not sure any of those are for me. I'd love to play Quidditch professionally, but not many people make it. It's not the smartest choice. Mum would have a fit..."

Tonks laughed before she could help herself.

"Being an Auror isn't the smartest of choices either," she said quickly in response to Ginny's raised eyebrow. "I've never seen you play Quidditch, so I can't promise you that you'd make it, but I think you should go for it if it's what you want to do."

Hermione pressed her lips together and picked up the book beside her on the sofa, fiddling with the pages. Ginny's head tilted to the side as she considered Tonks like she was seeing a new side of her.

"You'd get along well with Charlie," she said, her eyes narrowing as if such a thing was suspicious.

Tonks laughed again.

"I know I would," she said. "Charlie and I went to Hogwarts together. We were friends."

Ginny gasped, her eyes widening.

"Really?" she asked, leaning forward with an excitement that she hadn't shown at any other point in the conversation. "You mean you actually knew him when he was at school? Do you have any embarrassing stories? I have to know!"

"Of course I do," Tonks said with a laugh. "He was always getting into trouble."

She launched into her favourite story about Charlie: the day he'd tried to transfigure a suit of armour into a miniature dragon during their second year. The girls hung on her every word, though Ginny had a far different attitude towards the story than Hermione.

For the first time since arriving at Grimmauld Place, Tonks forgot about her insecurities and felt like she was among friends.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 and HufflepuffBanana for beta reading.**

**Word count: 2,007**

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Tonks' self-consciousness hadn't disappeared by the time she arrived for her second Order meeting a week after the first. It might have even been worse as she came by herself. Even though the house let her in with no difficulty, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was intruding in a place where she wasn't meant to be.

She stepped into the darkened entrance hall and was careful to sidestep the umbrella stand that had tripped her during her previous visit. The hall was empty, and no sounds could be heard from the other parts of the house, something she now knew was an attempt to keep Mrs Black's portrait quiet.

The fact that the hall itself was deserted shouldn't have fooled her though. She'd been sure the previous week that the kids were spying more than they'd let on to Mrs Weasley, and she gained even more evidence for it when sudden footsteps hurrying down the stairs turned out to be Ginny.

Tonks smiled instinctively when she saw Ginny's own beaming face.

"Wotcher," Tonks said. "How have things been here?"

Ginny gave a short shrug.

"The same as always," she said with a slight frown. "No one's really been here to visit since the last meeting except Lupin."

Tonks heard the slight accusation in Ginny's voice, and her smile turned sheepish.

"The Ministry may not want to admit that You-Know-Who is back," Tonks began, "but we're still swamped in the Auror Office. The _Prophet_ doesn't reveal even half of the so-called mysterious stuff that's happening."

"Like what?" Ginny asked, taking several subconscious steps forward.

Tonks was well trained in the art of not revealing official Auror business to those who didn't need to know, and her lips snapped shut as if Ginny's words had done it themselves. Sure, Tonks was breaking many of those rules while working for the Order, but most of the Order wouldn't have wanted Ginny to know the information anymore than the Aurors did.

Ginny sensed that she wasn't getting anywhere and groaned before Tonks could give her an excuse.

"I'm always in the dark," she grumbled, kicking at the floor.

Tonks worried that her voice would grow loud enough to provoke the portrait down the hall, but Ginny seemed to have become well trained in the art of keeping Mrs Black calm. She quelled her anger, though not the fire in her eyes.

"Sorry, Gin," Tonks said with a bright smile. "I have to be careful about what I say. It's just part of the job, but I'm sure I have plenty of stories that I can share. Maybe we can talk about them at dinner?"

Ginny's smile returned at the same moment that the front door creaked open behind them. Tonks saw Ginny's scowl a split second before she set eyes on Severus Snape for herself. She kept her face impassive as he stepped forward.

Just like last time, he didn't seem to notice Tonks and her companion until the door had swung shut behind him.

His eyes focused on the pair and narrowed with thinly veiled contempt. If it were possible, he seemed to dislike Ginny even more than he disliked her, and that knowledge made Tonks feel even fonder of the girl.

"Nymphadora," Snape began, drawing out the name she already hated and making a shiver travel down her spine. "You've made an interesting choice of friends, haven't you?"

Tonks bit her tongue, determined not to even notice Snape's sneer. There were a number of choice comments that passed through her head, but talking back to Snape was something her teenage self would have loved. She knew that giving into it would only make her feel more childish in the long run.

She shifted her weight and held her head high.

"I'd like to be friends with everyone around here," she said. Before she could help herself, she added, "Or almost everyone at least."

She turned to walk away from him before he could say anything more, but she'd taken only one step before she tripped over her own feet. The embarrassment overtook her before she'd hit the ground, with her cheeks flushing a bright red. At least the last time there had been an umbrella stand; the second time around she couldn't blame anything but herself.

The sound of her hitting the floor was louder than their hushed voices had been, and the portrait began screaming, making Tonks growl in frustration. Thankfully, her back was to Snape. She could imagine the haughty smile on his face, and she might have exploded if she saw it.

Sounds of someone rushing into the entrance hall from the kitchen could be heard, but Ginny had bent over to help her stand, preventing Tonks from immediately seeing who had arrived. Ginny got her to her feet, and Tonks took her time brushing off her robes.

She glanced up just as Remus and Sirius got the curtains fastened tight over the portrait. If her blush had lessened at all, it promptly came back.

"I'm sorry," she muttered, careful to keep her voice lower than was even necessary out of her shame.

"One would think," Snape drawled before anyone else could answer, "that an ability to walk would be the first requirement in Auror training. At times, I have to question the Ministry's standards."

Tonks glared at him but was unable to think of a response quickly. Sirius, however, seemed to have been waiting to pounce on Snape, and he wasted no time in telling the professor exactly what he thought.

"Sounds like someone is a little petty that they wouldn't pass the Auror exam if they tried. Huh, Snape?"

Snape scowled. He had yet to move from his spot just inside the door. He had no interest in getting closer to the others.

"Why would I want to join the Ministry's merry band of fools? All they're good at is showing off. Competency in useful magic matters little to them, and their own requirements and beliefs are chock-full of contradictions. The entire force is a mess. An idiot could become an Auror while the most talented wizard alive was denied a place. It doesn't matter to me whether they'd deign to accept me or not. Though I'm sure it would be endless fun to lock up people such as yourself."

Years of watching Snape snap at students hadn't prepared Tonks for the fire in his eyes as he took several steps forward. Sirius didn't back down and paid little attention to the cautioning hand that Remus placed on his shoulder.

"Dumbledore will be here any minute now," Remus said, his voice quiet but authoritative. "Is now really the time to be arguing?"

Sirius shot a look at his friend over his shoulder, and for a moment, Tonks thought he would continue to fight, but something seemed to pass over him when he and Remus made eye contact. With a sigh, he took a step backwards, towards Remus' side, leaving space for Snape to pass by them to the kitchen.

"You're not worth making my mother shout again, Snape. Let alone more than that."

Snape glanced at the covered portrait himself and slunk past the group as if they had disappeared from view.

Tonks hardly noticed him leaving or Ginny still standing beside her. Her gaze was fixated on the two men. Remus gave Sirius' shoulder a squeeze and earned the closest thing to a smile that Sirius seemed capable of producing. For a split second, Tonks felt like she was intruding on a private moment, but then Remus looked at her.

The smile he gave her wasn't the same as the one he'd directed at Sirius, but it made her stomach flutter in ways that were more than embarrassing enough. She gave him a small smile of her own, keeping her eyes bright as if Snape's words had held little sway over her.

"Are you all right?" Remus asked softly, and Tonks pretended it was only for her, not the temperamental portrait several feet away. "I know Snape knows how to hit where it hurts the most."

Tonks scoffed, shaking her head.

"Nothing Snape says can bother me," she lied.

The cause of the commotion suddenly hit her again as she remembered tripping over her own feet. A blush rose to her cheeks.

"I'm sorry for that," she said, motioning to the portrait as a way of explanation.

Instead of being annoyed or belittling her for her clumsiness as so many of her fellow Aurors were wont to do, Sirius laughed, only quelling it at the last second with a furtive glance at his mother's portrait.

"Are you kidding?" he asked with a smirk. "That was some of the most excitement I've had for the past week. I'll never pass up the chance to have it out with good ol' Snivellus."

Tonks pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at the old nickname that rolled easily off Sirius' lips. Remus scowled, hitting his friend lightly on the arm, but Sirius shrugged it off with little care, leaving Remus shaking his head in annoyance.

His gaze refocused on Ginny, who was still standing at Tonks' side and showed no desire to leave the scene.

"You should get back upstairs," he told her in a kind voice. "Your mother will have a fit if she comes out and sees you down here."

"The meeting hasn't even started yet," Ginny said, unable to keep the whining out of her voice.

She crossed her arms against her chest as if she were preparing to put up a fight, but it didn't provoke any frustration in Remus, whose smile remained the same as before.

"It will be soon," he said, "and you know how Molly will react if she knows you were anywhere near it. For now, I think it's best to keep the peace."

For a second, Ginny looked like she planned to argue, but she decided against it. She took several steps towards the stairs with a growl of frustration. There was no hurry in her steps as she glanced repeatedly over her shoulder at them, but the three adults watching her didn't urge her to move faster. Sirius even looked like he was about to laugh at her tenacity.

At the foot of the stairs, Ginny came to a stop all together, looking over at Tonks.

"You'll stay for dinner, right?" she asked, her face hopeful.

Tonks held in a sigh. Part of her was embarrassed at the thought of talking with Ginny throughout dinner as Snape's taunts still ran through her mind. But Ginny had faith in their friendship already, and Tonks couldn't deny that she enjoyed the girl's conversation.

"Of course," she said with a wide smile. "We'll talk then."

She wouldn't be able to tell Ginny the things she really wanted to know about the Order, but Ginny smiled at the promise anyway, and she no longer dragged out her steps as she disappeared to the first floor.

Tonks turned from her and noticed that Sirius had already disappeared, leaving only Remus behind. He smiled at Tonks and motioned to the stairs that led to the kitchen. She followed him much like she had the week before, her heart hammering faster in her chest.

"You've made a strong impression on the girls," he said softly as they walked. "Hermione and Ginny have been talking about you nonstop for the past week."

Tonks grimaced before she could stop herself, earning a small laugh from Remus. Despite the laughter, though, his smile was nothing but kind and, Tonks might have been imagining it, full of admiration.

"I know what Snape said to you, but you should ignore it. Everyone here respects you. No one gets Alastor Moody's approval easily, and both of those girls have been through more than most at their age. Earning their approval is a compliment as well."

Tonks smiled and, for the first time, didn't feel the least bit self-conscious as she followed him into the meeting.


	6. Chapter 6

**Thank you again to HufflepuffBanana and DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 882**

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Tonks' heart hammered in her chest as she approached the small London park that had been chosen as their meeting place before collecting Harry Potter from Surrey. If anyone asked about her nerves, Tonks would have said they were from the anticipation of meeting the Boy-Who-Lived. She'd heard the same stories about Harry Potter that everyone else had, so most would buy such an excuse.

But it was only a fraction of the truth. She was excited to meet Harry, especially after the positive things she'd heard since joining the Order, but the knots in her stomach had more to do with Remus Lupin than the boy. She couldn't fool herself otherwise. As a teenager, she had struggled for years before accepting that she liked girls in the same way she liked boys. Ever since, she'd been unable to fool herself when it came to her feelings.

No one had explicitly told her to disguise her appearance, but Tonks had done so regardless. She was more than aware of the trouble getting recognized by a Death Eater might cause her. She'd chosen the most unremarkable features she could think of, replacing her own mousy hair with a darker shade of brown that wouldn't call attention like the bright colours she preferred. The pair of jeans she'd chosen were the oldest pair in her closet, and they hung slightly loose on her hips after the countless times they'd been washed.

She spotted Remus before he spotted her, but when his eyes landed on her, there was instant recognition in his eyes despite her disguise. Her cheeks warmed, and she was thankful for the cover the darkness provided. She wondered what had given her away, but she didn't let her curiosity show as she walked confidently up to him.

"Wotcher," Tonks said cheerfully, not bothering to keep her voice down.

She'd already scanned the area for possible onlookers, but it was deserted. Not even the other members of their group at arrived yet.

"Am I really the second one here?" she asked as if that possibility were unbelievable though her nerves had led her to leave her flat twenty minutes earlier than she'd planned to.

The smile he offered her in return reminded her of the professional smiles she often received from fellow Aurors in the Auror Office.

"Yes," he said. "I'm sure the others will be here soon."

As if his words had summoned him, Alastor Moody's voice boomed across the park. He, too, had checked for potential onlookers and found nothing, and he didn't keep his voice down once he was within sight of them.

"Tonks," he growled. "Is that you? Here already? If you'd been this punctual during your training, you might've passed that tracking exam on your first try."

Tonks' cheeks flamed, both at being called out for her current overeagerness and at the memory of oversleeping and being an hour behind her fellow Auror trainees as a result. Moody had brought up the day she'd begun to doubt she'd make it as an Auror at all. She hid her unease by glaring at her mentor, but he was oblivious to the look as his magical eye spun around to check for the rest of their group.

"The others are close by," he said, crossing his arms against his chest. "Looks like we'll be leaving earlier than planned. I know you lot want to meet Potter, but it'd be nice if you could show as much enthusiasm for the rest of the work we do."

Remus gave Moody an indulgent smile as Tonks' own eyes scanned the area, picking out Order members one by one as they approached.

"We're all here because we're committed to the cause, Mad-Eye," Remus said.

Moody grumbled under his breath but didn't otherwise argue against Remus' words.

Within ten minutes, the entire group had arrived. They stood in a loose formation around Moody, recognizing him as their leader though no such designation had been formally made.

"Remember the plan," Moody said in the same voice he'd used with junior Aurors when he'd worked at the Ministry. "We'll take a Portkey to Arabella Figg's house a block away. From there, we'll approach the house as one group. No noise on the way; we're less likely to spark any Muggle curiosity that way. We collect Harry. Then, we wait for the signals. On the flight back to London, everyone is to follow my directions without hesitation. Clear?"

Tonks voiced her acceptance of the plan instinctually. She could have forgotten that she wasn't working within the Ministry chain of command. The Portkey they were using was, in fact, illegal. Soon, she'd have a reason to place herself under arrest, though she'd supposed she'd crossed that line when she learned the location of Britain's most wanted criminal. The last few months had shown her that there were always exceptions to hard and fast rules.

She gathered around the Portkey with the others, trying to ignore Remus' proximity as his arm brushed hers.

They had a mission: bring Harry Potter to Grimmauld Place without Voldemort or his Death Eaters getting in the way. This was work, even if it wasn't in the realm of her official duties. She wouldn't let her personal feelings get in the way of their success.


	7. Chapter 7

**Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 1,653**

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The real Harry Potter was different from the one Tonks had imagined in her head, but she had known better than to expect anyone to match an imagined version of themselves. It didn't make her less fond of him. On the contrary, getting to construct a new, realistic idea of him in her head made him more interesting to talk to.

One look at the Dursleys' house had been enough for Tonks to know that she wouldn't have survived one day there as a kid. That, coupled with what she'd heard about the family's treatment of Harry from others, made her loathe the Dursleys despite never meeting them. That Harry had grown into a decent kid despite such abuse was a marvel, and Tonks felt more loyalty to the Harry she met than she had to the mere idea of the Boy-Who-Lived.

From the moment they'd arrived on Privet Drive, Tonks had seen how Harry trusted Remus more than anyone else in their group, and she'd watched them interact with happiness. Harry deserved someone to trust after his childhood, and she already knew that Remus was perfect for that position. As if she needed another reason to like him even more.

For the rest of the summer, Tonks itched to sit down and speak with Remus at length about anything and everything, but with Grimmauld Place fuller than ever, there was always someone else wanting to talk to her about something. Most often, it was Hermione and Ginny who wanted to ask probing questions about her work and just what it was she was doing for the Order.

It was flattering that they looked up to her. When she'd started at Hogwarts, she'd looked up to the older students who knew far more magic than she did. She'd been excited about reaching their level someday. Eventually, she had, and those feelings had faded. Then, upon joining the Auror training program, they'd returned as she'd watched the full-fledged women Aurors and longed to be as skilled as they were. Even since graduating training, she continued to look up to the more experienced women around her. It was hard to believe she could ever be as talented as them.

Perhaps because of her awareness of how much farther she had to go, it was strange to be on the receiving end of such admiration.

If she were honest, it made her uncomfortable. She wasn't cut out to be a role model for anyone. When she'd been their age, she'd been an average student at best except for Transfiguration, where she'd excelled. There were far better people from them to admire, and she sometimes fought irritation as she tried to watch Remus from the corner of her eye while answering their questions thoroughly.

Eventually, September 1st came. The kids went back to Hogwarts, and the other Weasleys returned to the Burrow, leaving Grimmauld Place far emptier than Tonks had known it.

Her eagerness to visit wasn't just because she longed to speak to Remus. She also knew that Sirius wasn't taking his return to isolation well, no matter how he tried to hide it from others. So, she used the excuse of entertaining her cousin to visit Grimmauld Place as often as possible, and no one suspected anything of it.

Old habits from the summer continued. She never thought to warn Sirius—or his frequent guest Remus—that she was coming before she arrived. They were always more than happy to see her, and it was difficult to send word ahead to a house as protected as Grimmauld Place anyway.

Even once inside, she was comfortable enough with the house that she didn't feel the need to knock as she barged into the sitting room where she was sure she'd find them.

In the split second the door was opening, Remus and Sirius flew apart from each other on the sofa. There were a million possible reasons they could have been sitting close—Tonks wouldn't have thought anything of it in most circumstances—but Remus' cheeks were a light pink, and his eyes had focused on a random spot on the wallpaper instead of greeting her.

Sirius, however, was at ease as he rested his on the back of the sofa and gazed at her with an easy smile that didn't match with his typically irritable mood since sending Harry off to school. His ease also didn't disguise his tousled hair.

Tonks cleared her throat from the doorway and determinedly looked at the two men instead of the wall like Remus had decided to do. She forced her lips into her typical smile. Her Auror training had kicked in, and she felt every muscle in her body as she consciously made herself appear at ease.

"I thought you could use some company," she said, flopping onto an unclaimed chair.

Her body protested, wanting to flee, but that would solve nothing. It would only make things more awkward the next time she saw them. She swung one leg over the arm of the chair as her mind raced through possible explanations for what she'd seen.

"So," Sirius said, drawing out the word, "how are things in the Ministry's prestigious Auror Office?"

Tonks didn't have to fake the amused smile she gave him.

"Same as always," she said with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. "We're not allowed to do anything important. Yesterday, Kingsley informed the office that someone spotted you in Spain. Some English bloke on holiday apparently."

She and Sirius laughed together, but Remus had taken to staring at his lap, hardly hearing anything they said.

"Meanwhile," Tonks continued, "we have to ignore the Dementors' strange behavior at Azkaban. The official line is that there must be a natural cause. Someone suggested it was a breeding behavior. No one seems to wonder why they'd suddenly be breeding like this if that even is the cause. I suggested getting advice from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, but they just shrugged the suggestion off."

Both men hummed in acknowledgment, but neither of them had anything to add. It was nothing particularly new. They'd been complaining about the Ministry's inaction since before Tonks joined the Order after all.

An awkward silence descended, but Tonks was even more determined to drive it away than she'd been before. Remus was still staring at his lap, and a fear gripped her heart—though she knew it was irrational—that he might never look her in the eyes again.

She focused her gaze on him and asked him the question she'd come specifically to ask.

"You're going back to those werewolves soon, right?"

Despite knowing it was true, her stomach twisted when Remus nodded. He looked up from his lap, but his gaze was focused over her shoulder, not on her face.

"It's likely the Death Eaters have visited since I was last there, so Dumbledore wants to gauge what effect they're having. This trip should be shorter than the others."

His eyes flickered towards Sirius, who was staring at the arm of the sofa and picking at a loose thread. He nodded when he felt Remus' eyes on him but didn't look up.

"No," he said, "just long enough for you to regain their trust enough that they'll speak openly to you. It's not like that took you three weeks last time."

Remus sighed and rubbed at his brow. It was the first time since Tonks had arrived that his guard cracked.

"Gaining their trust takes less time each visit," he said quietly. Though Tonks could hear, she knew the words were for Sirius. "They mostly trust me now, but they don't get why I keep disappearing and coming back. It shouldn't be that hard to work past the distrust. Two weeks at the most."

Sirius's laugh in response made Tonks squirm in her chair.

"Two weeks of being alone here. Great," said Sirius sarcastically.

Remus' shoulders fell, and a frown graced his lips that broke Tonks' heart as much as Sirius' clear disappointment.

"I'll come visit," she said.

Both men turned to her as if they'd forgotten she was there. Sirius gave her a small smile that didn't reach his eyes, while Remus immediately went back to staring at his lap.

Tonks yearned to stay. If anything, her new suspicions gave her a multitude of new questions that she longed to know the answers to, but none of them were things she could ask out loud without being rude. The longer she stayed, the more likely it was that one of them would break free.

Her heart twisted in her chest, but she wasn't sure if she was upset for herself, the men across from her, or both. She squeezed her own fingers to keep her nerves at bay, but it didn't work. She needed to move to let the energy escape.

"I need to get going," she said suddenly.

She hadn't given herself time to think of an excuse before she said it, and her brain struggled to come up with one before the pause was suspicious. Luckily, she'd excelled at cover stories in Auror training.

"The stupid Ministry wants me to send a written report of the meeting we had today to the Minister by tomorrow, and I haven't bothered to start writing it yet."

The excuse was true, and Tonks delivered it with the appropriate amount of annoyance that earned a slight laugh from Sirius despite the mood.

"About me being in Spain?" he asked, his grin widening at her nod. "Can I read it when you're done? I'd love to imagine myself off in Ibiza instead of in this shitty house."

Tonks gave him a smirk as she stood.

"I'll see what I can do," she promised.

Despite the clarity she had hoped distance would provide, her feelings weren't any clearer once she was alone in her flat. If anything, she felt more confused than she had before.


	8. Chapter 8

**As always, thanks to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 2,060**

* * *

As the days passed, Tonks stayed away from Grimmauld Place. Her cheeks warmed whenever she thought of what she'd interrupted. No matter how many times she told herself that there were countless explanations for what she'd seen, she knew what it had been, and it had stuck to her brain, refusing to be forgotten.

If something was happening between Sirius and Remus, it didn't seem to be known within the Order, and Tonks despised knowing that she'd stumbled upon a secret that they didn't want her to know. But she wished that was the only thing bothering her. It was hard to fight the jealousy towards her cousin that wormed its way through her veins when she thought of his relationship with Remus.

At the same time, she hated that he was stuck in Grimmauld Place alone and felt sorry for him, as much as he would have despised the sympathy. Remus would have left for the werewolves since she'd seen them, and Sirius was sitting in that old house feeling lonelier than ever. He knew why she hadn't visited too—she had no excuse to provide—and the embarrassment of her own emotions was the final straw needed to pay him a visit.

A gift may not have meant much to someone locked in a house, but Tonks couldn't shake off the need to apologize for barging in without warning, so she found herself in Diagon Alley, nervously tapping her fingers against her leg as if Sirius would jump out in front of her at any moment.

The shopping street was busy as the usual shoppers went about their business. Tonks kept her eyes peeled for suspicious behavior in the crowd. Most of those around her had bought into Fudge and the Ministry's propaganda, so the crowd was largely at ease as they talked with each other and pointed in shop windows. Despite the pleasant picture it made, Tonks knew that Death Eaters could be anywhere, hiding in plain sight.

She travelled down the street, her eyes scanning each store as she went. She'd come with the purpose of buying Sirius a gift, but no matter how much she wracked her brain, she couldn't think of a single appropriate thing to buy for him.

Sirius had spent twelve years in Azkaban followed by a year on the run. Most of what he had were old possessions that had sat in Grimmauld Place untouched for the better part of a decade. That should have given her plenty of options when it came to a gift, but nothing felt right. Quidditch goods were out of the question when he couldn't leave the house. Even something like a jersey might have just reminded him of what he was missing, and Tonks could think of nothing else that Sirius had mentioned liking in the short time they'd been reacquainted. There had always been other things to talk about, like the war and the safety of those they knew.

Her hand was on the door of a shop with various knick-knacks in the window, hoping it would provide her with something, when a familiar voice stopped her in her tracks.

"Tonks, is that you?"

Tonks gaped as she turned around to face Alexandra Holmes, who wore a beaming smile on her face. Tonks' stomach dropped. She hadn't seen Alexandra since their seventh year of Hogwarts, but the woman looked exactly the same.

"Uh, yeah," Tonks said, clearing her throat. "Nice to see you, Lex."

Alexandra laughed, but before Tonks could force her own expression into a smile, the shuffling of little feet drew her attention downward. In quick succession, she made two observations that twisted her stomach into knots: First, a small boy no older than three was gripping Alexandra's hand and staring up at Tonks with curiosity. Second, Alexandra's stomach was round from pregnancy.

"How are you?" Alexandra asked, rubbing one hand absentmindedly over her stomach.

If she noticed how startled Tonks was, she preferred to ignore it. Tonks swallowed, pushing away her shock and doing her best to smile.

"I'm doing well. You?" she asked, hoping Alexandra would explain away the child as if he'd arrived by some kind of plot twist. There was no way she could already be on number two when Tonks hadn't dated a soul since leaving Hogwarts.

"I haven't seen you since Hogwarts," Tonks added before Alexandra could answer, the full force of what she'd missed since then hitting her for the first time.

She looked at the little boy again, taking note of his similarities to his mother. He had Alexandra's sharp nose and his eyes, though differently shaped, were the same shade of blue. Tonks blinked and forced herself to look away. The boy's wide eyes as he looked back unnerved her, and even as she looked at Alexandra, she felt his gaze on her.

"It really has been ages, hasn't it?" Alexandra said with the same laugh that had made Tonks smile instinctively for a long time.

It didn't make her go weak in the knees anymore. It only made her shift uncomfortably as she confronted their shared past and the different directions life had taken them in.

"Well," Alexandra raised her hand that held the boy's, "I have a son now, and there's another little one on the way." She gave another pat to her stomach. "Cassie—that's my wife—and I are so excited. We've always planned for two. I guess that Katrina told you I got married a few years ago?"

It was a lot of information all at once. Tonks had forgotten how quickly Alexandra spoke. At Hogwarts, it had been invigorating, but in the moment, it left her dizzy. Several seconds too late, she caught up with the question she'd been asked and gave a slight nod, though Katrina—a mutual friend from their earliest days at Hogwarts—had mentioned no such thing. Guiltily, Tonks tried to remember the last time she'd spoken to Katrina. She couldn't remember.

"She might have mentioned it," Tonks said quietly. "There's always so much going on. I guess it slipped my mind after a while. Good for you though! I'm glad things have worked out."

And she was happy for Alexandra, even as she grew increasingly distraught for herself.

"Thank you," Alexandra said, her smile turning mischievous. "You're an Auror now then? Just like you always said you would be?"

Tonks' nod was so small that it was almost imperceptible.

"I knew it," Alexandra squealed, rushing forward to squeeze Tonks' arm. Tonks gave an uncomfortable laugh, very aware of Alexandra's son, who was staring between the two women in confusion. "No one else in our year was as driven as you were about the future. We all knew that, if anyone was going to make it as an Auror, it would be you. You weren't going to rest until you made it happen."

Tonks glanced over her shoulder at the store they were still hovering outside of. She didn't like the way Alexandra was brushing important parts of their history under the rug. Maybe the other woman had forgotten the countless fights that had led to their breakup, but Tonks hadn't. Alexandra's words from all those years ago still stung when she thought of them. Each time she'd struggled in training, Alexandra's insults had echoed in her thoughts and made it harder to succeed.

Even when she'd considered dating, memories of their disastrous relationship had held her back.

The words Alexandra was saying now were nothing like the ones she'd last left Tonks with, and Tonks no longer wanted to hear her assurances that she'd always believed in her.

"Your wife's name is Cassie?" Tonks asked, desperate to move the conversation away from herself. "I don't remember a Cassie at Hogwarts."

"Oh, she didn't go to Hogwarts," Alexandra said, her smile turning fond as she thought of her wife. "She's a Muggle."

The words were spoken with ease, but Tonks' blood ran cold when she heard them. She watched Alexandra's face carefully, but there was no hint of fear. She believed Fudge's lies that Voldemort hadn't returned, and that made Tonks even more uncomfortable with the knowledge that she'd married a Muggle. Alexandra and her family had become potential targets several months ago, and Alexandra was oblivious to the danger they were in.

Tonks had half a mind to grab the other woman by the shoulders and not let go until she understood the need to protect herself and her family. But she couldn't do that. The little boy had lost interest in the adults and was playing with a line of ants marching in front of the store, but he would notice if Tonks began speaking of You-Know-Who with his mother.

She took a deep breath instead and widened the smile on her lips.

"I'm sure she's great," she said. She glanced at the boy again, wondering how much longer he would look carefree. "Your son is cute."

Alexandra glanced at him too and realized that he was playing with insects for the first time. Her smile fell.

"Mitchell," she snapped, tugging him away from the ants. "Stop that. You'll get yourself covered in dirt."

The boy began to fuss, not happy to lose his fun as his mother talked. Alexandra struggled to focus on Tonks as she clung to the struggling child.

"Sorry," she said with a sheepish smile. "You know how children are."

Tonks didn't really. Not as a parent who had to deal with them daily at least, but she nodded anyway. She took a couple of steps backward, towards the store, sure that Alexandra would excuse herself to focus on her son, but she didn't. Her gaze was intent on Tonks even as Mitchell whined, "Mummy," loud enough for the whole street to hear.

"What about you?" Alexandra asked, leaning forward eagerly. "Are you seeing anyone?"

This was the question Alexandra had been waiting to ask since she'd caught sight of Tonks. Feeling her cheeks warm, Tonks accepted that she had little chance of getting away without answering.

"No," she said. "I'm single right now."

She didn't miss the flash of amusement in Alexandra's eyes, but it was gone a second later, replaced with a small smile and sympathetic tilt of her head.

"I guess being a full-fledged Auror is as time consuming as being one in training, huh?" she asked. "Your dream career was always what came first, even when we were Hogwarts students. No shame in that."

Bile burned at the back of Tonks' throat. She swallowed and smiled, willing her eyes to stop stinging before a tear broke free. If Alexandra's words had given her cut after cut, this one was the fatal blow.

The worst part was that it was true. Or, it had been for years. Tonks had accepted losing Alexandra because she hadn't known how to make her dream come true and make their relationship work at the same time. She'd pushed aside other possible romances because Alexandra had proven that they would fail unless Tonks cared less about her work. But, for the first time, she wanted to choose a relationship over her career, yet it didn't matter.

When she'd finally found someone she might have been willing to, if not sacrifice her career, at least focus on it less for, they were unattainable.

She'd avoided thinking of her feelings for Remus in such blunt terms until Alexandra reminded her. If Tonks had to face her ex-girlfriend for much longer, she wouldn't be able to keep her composure.

"I'm really sorry, Alexandra, but I have to go." She began backing away before she had finished speaking. "I promised a friend that I'd meet him for dinner, and it's getting late."

"Oh," Alexandra said, shrugging her shoulders as if it were a situation out of her control that she begrudgingly accepted. "Well, it was nice catching up with you. I hope we can talk again soon."

Tonks gave her one last strained smile before fleeing up the street, not giving the other woman time to ask her for an address or any other way to contact her.

She'd made it out of Diagon Alley and back into Muggle London before she remembered that she'd been there to buy a gift for Sirius. Growling in frustration, she Apparated home, no longer able to stomach the idea of Grimmauld Place.


	9. Chapter 9

**Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 1,008**

* * *

Tonks pushed herself away from the desk, stretching with a loud groan. She collapsed against the back of her chair and tilted her head back as she rubbed a hand across her face. A glance at the clock showed that she'd been buried in paperwork for two hours: a long time but significantly less time than she'd thought.

With another groan, she got up from her desk. One step outside her cubicle, she had to dodge a memo as it zoomed past. She cursed under her breath as she continued to the break room.

Two fellow Aurors were sitting at the table; Tonks nodded at them as she passed. As soon as her coffee began to brew, her brain perked up in anticipation of the caffeine. She was so singularly focused that, at first, she didn't hear what Bennett and Cooper were discussing.

"They asked if I'd be launching an investigation," Bennett said in her usual booming voice, pausing only to take a sip of her tea. "When I told them the standard stuff—can't speak on such matters without permission, you know—one of them got really serious. She was staring at me all intent-like. It gave me the chills. She said, 'I know your lot don't want to listen, but we're serious. He keeps sending people here. You have to stop it.'"

Cooper laughed, throwing his blond head back. Tonks turned to face the pair, a frown creasing her brow. Nothing about the story sounded funny to her.

"They really said that?" Cooper asked. "As if we'd accept that You-Know-Who is back based on the word of some werewolves when we have plenty of sources telling us he's not?"

"And as if a group of werewolves causing mayhem in Cornwall would be our biggest concern even if he was," added Bennett with an amused smirk of her own. Tonks' eyes narrowed as she watched the two Aurors. "Can you imagine them actually helping us?"

"And why not?" Tonks snapped.

She sat her coffee to the side, no longer needing the caffeine to energize her.

"You-Know-Who's never been a fan of anyone who isn't a pureblood witch or wizard. Sure, he'll use magical beings as tools, but he'd want them dead in the end. Why wouldn't werewolves side with us over him?"

Bennett and Cooper shared a look, with Cooper's mouth opening and closing as if he wanted to say something but couldn't find the right words. Tonks stared at them, her lips a thin line as she waited for something, anything, to be said.

"Well, they love getting easier access to humans, don't they?" Bennett finally said, regaining a smile that Tonks took as patronizing. "They're not very forward-thinking. It's not like they'd care about ideology as long as they had prey in the short-term."

Tonks scoffed.

"'Not very forward-thinking'?" she repeated. "Do you hear yourselves? Werewolves are human at the end of the day. Their minds work the same except at the full moon. They're not any less 'forward-thinking'," she repeated the phrase mockingly, "than any witch, wizard, or Muggle."

The other Aurors shared an amused look, but they didn't care much for arguing when they saw Tonks' own opinion as absurd. Both of them had a decade more experience than Tonks in the department, and she could see from their expressions that they took her impassioned defense of werewolves as nothing more than naivety, but neither of them said as much out loud.

Kingsley walked in. He was the picture of calm and unaffected as he poured himself a cup of coffee, but the way his eyes scanned the room hinted that he felt the tension and possibly had only entered because of it.

"How's everything?" he asked in the same tired tone of voice that was common after a day spent on paperwork.

"Not too shabby," Cooper said, the disagreement with Tonks forgotten. "Bennett here was just telling me about some werewolves who swear You-Know-Who is trying to recruit them."

Kingsley raised an eyebrow. Nothing in his demeanor hinted at the same amusement that Cooper and Bennett had shared over the situation.

"Have you filed their statements?" he asked Bennett.

Bennett shrugged.

"Not yet, but I will."

Kingsley turned stern. Tonks bit back a satisfied grin as Bennett shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

"Do it now," Kingsley demanded. It wasn't rude, but it was a reminder of who had the higher rank in the office. "You know the protocol. The longer you wait, the more distorted the memories become even with spells. No matter your personal feelings, that's a large claim for a witness to make, and we have to have a record of it that's as accurate as possible."

Keeping her eyes on her cup, Bennett nodded.

"I'll do it now," she promised, wasting only the time it took to cast a cleaning spell on her cup and store it in the cabinet above the sink before disappearing from the room. Cooper, too, excused himself quickly.

Once she was alone with Kingsley, Tonks allowed herself to smile.

"Thank you," she said, careful to keep her voice low enough that no one passing in the corridor had a chance of hearing her.

"For what?" Kingsley asked, his voice a little louder. "I'm only making sure everyone follows proper procedure. That is part of my job after all."

Despite the words, his eyes sparkled with amusement. Though the two of them had never discussed Remus together, he knew of her frequent visits to Grimmauld Place, and her face warmed at the idea of him knowing what had driven her to get defensive with their co-workers.

Kinsgley gave her one last smile and disappeared with his coffee, leaving Tonks alone. She leaned against the counter with a sigh, rubbing her hands over her eyes. Reaching for her coffee again, she took a huge gulp before deciding it was too cold and vanishing it with a flick of her wand. She could afford the time it took to brew another cup before she sat back down to work.


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: As always, thanks to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**I did my final edits of this chapter while sitting in an apart after a ten hour flight and no sleep for twenty-four hours, so I apologize if anything slipped by me or this chapter is just bad.**

**Word count: 1,561**

* * *

She couldn't ignore Grimmauld Place forever. Before long, there was another Order meeting that she had a responsibility to attend.

Though she arrived mere seconds before she would have been late and though she sat as far as possible from the men who were the source of her problem, she couldn't stop looking at them throughout the meeting.

When she'd first joined the Order, she'd been eager to know every detail of what the other members were up to, even if she didn't have a hand in it, but she couldn't be bothered to listen to any of that night's updates. Remus Lupin was the only thing she could focus on. She glanced at him from the corner of her eyes repeatedly, worried each time that she would be caught in the act.

It was made worse by the fact that she was sure he was looking at her too, his posture stiff. No matter what was between him and Sirius, he was, for the length of the meeting, more focused on her than on his old friend at his side. Tonks was as proud of it as she was ashamed that she was proud.

By the end of the meeting, during which she spoke as little as possible, she was ready to flee. Every cell in her body hummed with energy, and her stomach sloshed, protesting violently against the possibility of dinner.

She needn't have worried though. With Molly no longer around to keep the house in tip-top shape, no one entertained the idea of staying behind for dinner. Instead, they left within minutes of Dumbledore, and Tonks hurried to keep pace with them before she was left behind, but Sirius appeared in front of her as if he'd Apparated there. Tonks huffed, momentarily forgetting that she was meant to be concealing her anger.

"Are you trying to give me a heart attack?" she snapped.

Sirius was unperturbed by her outburst. He had a hopeful smile on his lips that was entirely unlike the mournful look he'd worn during the meeting.

"Stay for a drink?" he asked, lifting a bottle of firewhisky that Tonks noticed for the first time.

She eyed it distrustfully. If staying sounded like a bad idea, then getting drunk with the two people she was actively concealing something embarrassing from sounded even worse, but there was a hope in Sirius' eyes that she couldn't crush when he was already dealing with so much. Before she could stop herself, she nodded and was pulled into a bone-crushing hug.

Sirius ushered her back to the kitchen table, empty except for Remus. Stray chairs still sat pulled out from the table when people had been too lazy to push them back in. Tonks slid into the chair that Arthur Weasley had occupied earlier as Sirius gathered glasses and hummed to himself.

Remus gave her a small, nervous smile that she did her best to return. She kept her eyes on the bottle of firewhisky as Sirius poured some for each of them and passed the glasses around.

Tonks took a long gulp of hers before anything could be said, cringing as the burn hit her throat. She coughed.

"This is strong," she said, struggling to get the words out as she continued to cough.

Sirius laughed, his own glass already half empty.

"My parents always stocked the best."

Tonks' eyes widened. She tilted the glass and swirled it around as if the liquid itself would reveal something.

"This has been here since before your parents…"

Sirius shrugged, his smile not dimming at the allusion to his parents' deaths.

"Firewhisky doesn't go bad," Sirius said with a shrug. "You're drinking the good stuff."

Tonks raised an eyebrow, unable to keep an amused grin off her face.

"It's wine that ages and gets better," she pointed out. "I'm 90 per cent sure that isn't how whisky works."

Sirius shrugged and took another swig. Tonks looked at her glass and debated with herself for only a moment before she drank herself. At least it was alcohol. Her cells were still humming with energy, and she needed something to distract her from Remus, who had only taken a small sip of his own drink so far.

He hadn't yet said a word, and Tonks both longed to hear him speak and couldn't bring herself to ask him a question.

"So, how's the Auror office?" Sirius asked, allowing Tonks to breathe easier.

"Same as before," she said, running her finger around the rim of her glass. "No one is taking the threat seriously. They all think Dumbledore is full of it as if they always thought he was a laughing stock. It's frustrating."

She drank again, downing the last of her glass, and Sirius refilled it without being asked. Tonks didn't have any reservations about the drink anymore. She was caught up in her familiar frustrations, with her other worries falling to the wayside in response.

"Kingsley said that there's no one else from the Auror Office to recommend for the Order," Remus said, his voice cracking from disuse.

Tonks locked eyes with him, her heart skipping a beat.

"He knows better than I do," she said, "but I wouldn't know of anyone. One would hope there weren't so many idiots there."

Remus cracked a smile, and Tonks looked back down at her whisky.

"Little chance of that," Sirius said. "The Ministry has always been full of people more concerned about their egos than anything else. You get a few bad eggs, and it spreads and spreads. That's not where anything good happens. They'll only listen when they're made to."

"There's little chance of that either," Tonks said. "Most people are happy to believe that everything is fine."

The conversation she'd overheard in the break room preoccupied her. She hadn't wanted to tell Remus about it, but suddenly, she felt like she was going to explode with the knowledge that people were such prejudiced arseholes. She could hardly prevent herself from sharing it.

"They're good at their jobs if they're given the right tasks," she said with a sheepish shrug. "But they're just as ignorant as everyone else. The other day, someone didn't want to log testimony from a werewolf because she didn't take them seriously. Kingsley set her straight, but still, I can't believe people are such prejudiced arseholes in this day and age."

She trailed off, not sure what else to say. Remus had stiffened, his lips turned down in a slight frown, and Sirius' expression had grown darker. The way he looked at her made Tonks regret telling the story. She couldn't figure out why saying it aloud had ever been appealing. Her cheeks burned with the knowledge that it had been a mistake, though she felt as if she were still missing something that had been left unsaid between her and the men so far.

Tonks looked between the men, trying to make sense of the small smile yet sad eyes of Remus and the look of thinly veiled fury that Sirius was shooting her.

"It shouldn't come as a surprise," Sirius said, still looking at her in a way that baffled her. "Werewolves have been all but hunted for centuries. And before that they actually _were_ hunted. I'm sorry that your precious beliefs in a just society have been quashed."

Tonks gaped at her cousin as her brain whirled through possible responses, none of which felt right. She glanced at Remus, who had turned a light pink at Sirius' words but seemed unable to say anything himself. Tonks felt the fragile pieces of her heart break further. She certainly hadn't meant to sound ignorant. She'd known that there was plenty of prejudice before the incident, though she'd have to admit that she hadn't realized how much until she'd learned of Voldemort's return and how many Death Eaters had returned to his service.

Her ears rang with shame, and suddenly, not even the alcohol was helping with her anxiety. She stared at the cup, willing herself not to lose control.

"That's not fair, Sirius."

Tonks' head shot up to look at Remus, her eyes wide.

"You'd have said the same thing once," Remus said. His gaze was on Sirius, but Tonks felt breathless as she watched him. "It may have been twenty years ago, but you weren't always well-versed on the troubles of werewolves."

Sirius gave a strange jerk that was half nod and half shrug. His jaw was tight, hinting that he wasn't happy to hear Remus speak of something truthful. It reminded Tonks of his current plight, and she felt a surge of pity despite what he'd said to her. None of them were had been happy in recent days, and she couldn't find it in herself to blame Sirius for having a short fuse, especially about something so important.

The knowledge that Sirius was lonely and isolated prompted her to down the rest of her whisky, cringing as it burned its way down her throat. She'd never been a big whisky drinker in the first place, preferring wines or, at least, butterbeer when she drank, but she was determined to stay, and she wasn't sure she could do that sober.

Sirius filled her glass for a third time, and Tonks accepted that as her apology as she tilted the glass in his direction and took another drink.


	11. Chapter 11

**Word count: 1,935**

* * *

Tonks put on her best sheepish smile as her mother opened the door.

"Sorry for not visiting sooner," she said before Andromeda could begin her complaints. "I've been busy at work, and well, I have some new, unexpected commitments."

Andromeda sighed loudly as Tonks brushed past her to the living room of the house she'd grown up in. Most of the decor was unchanged from when she was younger, and each time Tonks visited, nostalgia enveloped her. Sometimes it was unpleasant, but sometimes it was comforting. Tonks felt the latter as she sunk into her favourite armchair, letting it envelope her just as the nostalgia already had.

"You've always kept yourself busy," were Andromeda's first words, her tone riding a fine line between a mere observation and a rebuke.

Tonks gave her mother her best smile. With a shake of her head, Andromeda went into the kitchen, coming back several minutes later with a tray laden with tea for both of them.

"Is Dad at work?" Tonks asked as she watched Andromeda set only two cups on the table in front of them. "Doesn't he still have his policy about not working past 5:00?"

"You're not the only one who's been busy lately," Andromeda said, her forehead creasing in a frown as she poured Tonks tea and added sugar just the way she liked it. "For all the _Prophet_'s talk of Dumbledore being off his rocker, people are hedging their bets. Everyone's getting their affairs in order in case things go south. Your father says he's notarized more wills in the last month than he can count."

A shiver travelled down Tonks' spine.

"That's morbid," she muttered.

Though she understood the dangers You-Know-Who presented, she couldn't shake the feeling that many of her father's clients were preparing to flee if needed, and she didn't like it.

Andromeda handed Tonks her tea and kept her firm gaze on her instead of pouring a cup of her own.

"What do you know about You-Know-Who?" she asked in a hushed voice as if they'd be overheard. Having set many of her parents' wards herself, Tonks was almost offended. "Technically, your father's a Ministry employee like you are, but they're never told anything about the real problems. As an Auror… If you'd heard anything, you'd tell us, right?"

Tonks took a sip of her tea to force herself not to answer recklessly.

"Would it make a difference if I told you?" she asked quietly, staring into her teacup.

Andromeda glanced at her as she poured her own tea, foregoing any sugar or milk.

"It would," she said as she cradled the cup in her hands. "At least I would have a better idea of what you're getting up to at work every day. When your daughter decides to become an Auror, it's hard to have some peace of mind."

Mother and daughter watched each other in silence for a moment before Tonks caved, setting her tea aside with a sigh.

"Dumbledore's created a group called the Order of the Phoenix. Actually, he created it when You-Know-Who was in power nearly two decades ago, but he's brought it back together and invited new members, including me."

Andromeda's lips pressed into a thin line.

"You believe he's back then? Just like Dumbledore says?"

Tonks captured and held her mother's gaze as she leant forward in her seat.

"I don't _think_ so, Mum. I know it. Fudge has never been a competent Minister, and he knows he can't handle a war. That's why he'd rather pretend nothing is happening. He's idiotic enough to believe that, if he just ignores it, it won't be true, but You-Know-Who is back. I've met Harry Potter; I've heard what he saw. He's not lying, and any Auror who bothered to pay attention would see the evidence that's right in front of us. We're not safe. Not for much longer at least."

Tonks watched anxiously as Andromeda stared at the wall, her face impassive. Finally, she looked at Tonks, a small smile warming her features. She reached out to take Tonks' hand, the skin of her palm warm from the tea.

"You were always quick to do the right thing," she said, giving Tonks' hand a squeeze. "During the last war, I made excuses for why I couldn't fight. You were young and needed your mother. I wasn't skilled enough with a wand to make a difference. Maybe those excuses were all true, but even if they were, they don't change the fact that I wasn't brave enough to fight. But from the time you were a little girl, I knew you'd never be the type to sit around when you could be doing something, even if it was dangerous. And I'm proud of you for it, Nymphadora. I'm scared out of my mind, but I am proud of you."

Tonks, not knowing what else to do, blinked tears from her eyes and gripped her mother's hand tightly. Andromeda visibly swallowed, widening her smile with effort.

"How is the famous Harry Potter then?" she asked, pressing on before Tonks could answer. "You know, I've never met the boy, though I'm sure I've told you before that my cousin was named his godfather."

"Sirius Black," Tonks said, unable to hold back a short laugh. "Yes, I know, Mum. I've met him. Sirius is also in the Order of the Phoenix."

Andromeda froze for a second before exhaling.

"He didn't run as far as the _Prophet_ said he did then," she muttered to herself. "I wasn't surprised when he broke out of Azkaban despite it being impossible. If anyone was going to do it, it would be Sirius, but why would Dumbledore let a convicted criminal join his Order?"

"Because he knows Sirius isn't a murderer. Mum, Sirius didn't betray anyone to You-Know-Who, and he certainly didn't kill anyone. He was framed by Peter Pettigrew. Pettigrew is alive and a Death Eater. He helped You-Know-Who come back this summer, and if he's caught, then the Ministry will have to acknowledge that Sirius is innocent. He'll be free."

Tears shone in Andromeda's eyes as she pulled her hand away from Tonks' and patted the back of it instead.

"Thank you for sharing that with me," she said in a wavering voice. "I've always struggled to believe that Sirius could do something like that, but then, you tell yourself that most murderers have loved ones who would say the same thing. I couldn't cling to hope when it seemed naive."

Tonks watched her mother for a long time, but Andromeda was unable to say anything else as she processed the news that, in a strange and distant way, she'd regained the only family member who'd stuck by her after she was disowned.

"I wish you could see him," Tonks said. "He's miserable locked up in Grimmauld Place unable to leave, but no one but Order members are allowed in. There are spells and enchantments on the place stronger than those on the Ministry possibly. If there was a way to get you in, though, I'd make it happen."

Andromeda stroked Tonks' cheek with a smile, something she hadn't done since Tonks was a child.

"Thank you," she said. "I'm just happy to know that he's safe for the time being, and I'm glad that you're getting to know him as an adult instead of relying on the memories of a young girl. One of my biggest regrets is that I couldn't give you more family as a child."

Tonks rolled her eyes and batted her mother's hand away from her cheek.

"Shut up. I've told you before that it doesn't matter. I'm happy that I've met Sirius though. He's a good person. So is his friend Remus."

As soon as the words were spoken, she snapped her mouth shut. She hadn't meant to say them. They'd merely come out on their own. But Andromeda didn't notice Tonks' discomfort. Her own smile was wistful as she thought of the past.

"Remus Lupin is in this Order too? He and Sirius were always close. It's good to know that Sirius still has a friend after everything."

"You knew Remus?" Tonks asked, eyes wide as she leant forward. "What was he like before?"

Andromeda shook her head.

"I didn't know him well," she admitted. "To me, he was just Sirius' friend. He was a nice boy, always the most level-headed of the kids Sirius hung out with. He kept the rest of them in line. Somewhat. Despite not knowing him well, I was quite fond of him because Sirius was. Ostensibly, James Potter was Sirius' best friend, but the way he talked about Remus was different. As far as I know, there was never anything more than friendship between them, but I always kind of wished…"

Her gaze snapped back to the present, and she gave a short laugh.

"Well, it doesn't matter what I would want, does it? I'm happy they have each other's friendship after the difficult times they've both surely been through. Besides, Sirius always told me he didn't want a committed relationship during a war, that there'd be time for such things after. He was always busy doing what he thought was right. Being locked in that house has to be the worst punishment imaginable for him."

"It's still a prison," Tonks agreed. "Even if it's gaudier and doesn't have Dementors."

Andromeda hummed in agreement, her eyes focusing on a distant spot again.

"You've always reminded me of Sirius in that way," she said, her smile growing sad. "When you decided to become an Auror, I had no idea there'd be a war, but I knew you were as eager to be fighting for what's right as Sirius always was. He may have been a black sheep within the Black family, but somehow, you're like him in many ways."

"Is this your way of saying you want me to focus on dating and finding a good spouse instead of fighting, Mum?"

Tonks kept her tone light even as her stomach sank. Her mother had never put that sort of pressure on her, but she knew many of her friends, especially those with ties to old wizarding families, had been victims of it even while at Hogwarts. She'd counted herself lucky that her parents hadn't cared.

Andromeda shook her head.

"I'm not telling you to get married or even to date," she said in a firm voice. She took Tonks' hand again, cradling it in her own. "You should never do anything that doesn't make you happy, and I'd never rush you into marriage without you being sure of it. What I _am_ worried about is you purposefully putting off your happiness because you think you need to focus on some greater duty. I'm very proud of you for becoming an Auror and joining Dumbledore's Order, but if you think being with someone will make you happy, don't put it off in the hopes that there will be time for it later. We don't always get that chance."

Tonks sighed and tugged her hand from Andromeda's grip. They had entered dangerous territory where she didn't want to tread, and she had no idea how to extricate herself without revealing more than she intended.

"I don't plan to avoid anything, Mum. Sure, I've been focused on my career, but I'm not purposefully putting anything off. If something happens, that's great. If not, I'll be fine. Don't worry about me."

Andromeda laughed and pulled Tonks into a hug, rubbing her back.

"That's an impossible task, sweetheart. You can't ask that of me."


	12. Chapter 12

**Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 716**

* * *

Tonks scanned the gathered Order members as she took her place at the table. Unlike last time, her late arrival had been an accident. There'd been a scam artist masquerading as a potioneer by selling what he called the Draught of Living Death, and several people had died. After several days of working nearly nonstop, Tonks had been the one to take him into custody.

She'd come to the meeting straight from Azkaban and was still fighting off shivers as she sat down at Grimmauld Place's kitchen table.

On the way over, she'd been unable to stop thinking of Remus. If there was one thing that would vanish the Dementors' effects, it was him, but he was nowhere to be found once she arrived. Instead, her gaze found Sirius seconds before Dumbledore stood at the head of the table and began to speak.

"Thank you all for coming tonight," he said, prompting Tonks to nod as if she was paying attention.

She couldn't focus as she observed the frown that lined Sirius' face. The chair beside him where Remus typically sat was empty, as if the other members had been expecting him too and hadn't dared to claim the seat as their own.

When Sirius looked at her, she struggled to smile. He smiled back, but it didn't reach his eyes. Tonks looked away and did her best to tune back in to the meeting as Dumbledore began speaking about what mattered the most to her.

"As some of you have noticed," Tonks swore Dumbledore's eyes lingered on her for a second too long, "Remus isn't with us today. He's visiting the werewolves in Cornwall once again. Just yesterday I received a letter saying that all was well. He'll have a more detailed update for us at our next meeting."

Questions ran through Tonks' mind, but she bit her lip to hold them inside. Dumbledore had told them everything he would reveal to the Order. There was no use asking in front of everyone and looking too eager for news. It would do nothing but embarrass her.

The rest of the meeting dragged as she waited anxiously to speak with Sirius, her knee bobbing beneath the table.

The second Dumbledore dismissed them, Tonks shot up from her seat and hurried to where Sirius still sat alone. She took the seat that should have been Remus'. Sirius glanced at her, not bothering to put on a cheerful face. Tonks glanced at the people filing out of the room, ensuring they were more or less alone before she spoke.

"How are you doing?"

Sirius shrugged, a small smirk on his lips. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh and tilted his head to look at the ceiling.

"As fine as can be expected," he muttered in what was little more than a whisper.

Tonks watched him for a moment, waiting to see if he would elaborate. He didn't. She knew he'd probably been alone since Remus had left, and she began to fiddle with the hem of her robes as they spoke. She pushed aside her worries of Remus and focused on the dark circles under Sirius' eyes and the way his body sagged as he sat in the chair.

"Would you mind if I spent the night?" she asked suddenly, surprising even herself.

Sirius slowly raised one eyebrow. His smirk grew amused.

"Why would you do that?" he asked. "Don't you have a perfectly fine flat of your own here in London?"

Tonks shrugged, allowing herself a small laugh that was more at her own audacity than anything else.

"Sometimes living alone gets lonely. You know I'm a people person."

Sirius watched her closely, nodding as he considered her words. Her heart raced in her chest as she waited for an answer. She half expected to be shooed away, so Sirius could continue to stew in his misery, but in the end, he shrugged.

"That's more than okay with me. Merlin knows I could use some amusement."

He stood from his chair and glanced at her over his shoulder as he walked towards the door.

"Do you want to go see if Kreacher has bothered to clean any of the rooms since the others left?"

Tonks laughed as she followed him out of the kitchen.


	13. Chapter 13

**Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1985 and noraborealis for beta reading.**

**Word count: 2,196**

* * *

There wasn't much talk after Sirius agreed to let Tonks stay. He led her to a bedroom a couple floors higher than she'd ever been before and left her to prepare for bed, and Tonks hadn't seen him since, almost as if he was avoiding her much like she'd avoided him and Remus not long ago.

Late in the night, a scream pierced the air, startling Tonks awake and making her fly out of bed. She paused, standing in the middle of the unfamiliar bedroom Sirius had let her use. The scream had been startling, but her Auror training slowed her down and let her analyze the situation before she acted.

Sirius was the only other person in the house, which meant he was the most likely source of the scream. There was Kreacher, but what she'd heard couldn't have possibly come from a house elf.

There was a split second when just how much Sirius had been through hit her like a train. While she'd known it all before, she'd never quite felt the weight of it until she linked that horrifying scream back to her cousin.

She'd dropped her fair share of prisoners off at Azkaban over the years, and she'd felt the effects of the Dementors for brief periods while she was there. Spending twelve years in that godforsaken place was unimaginable to her.

A chill travelled down her spine, and she hesitated to act.

Sirius always tried to appear lighthearted, even when hints of darkness crept through the facade. She knew he wouldn't like having his secret turmoil exposed. At first, Tonks thought she'd humor him. The screaming had stopped; it had most likely been a nightmare that he'd woken from. She could pretend she hadn't heard anything and help him keep up the charade. There would be no harm done; his life wasn't in danger.

Except she couldn't go back to bed after hearing something like that.

Knowing the truth would eat at her, and she concealed enough on a daily basis. She didn't need to add to the careful lies she told everyone around her.

Without allowing herself time to falter, she slipped out of the guest room and up a set of stairs to where she knew Sirius' own room was. She worried briefly about not knowing which door to knock on, but a nameplate with 'Sirius' carved in an elegant script solved that problem for her.

She knocked.

"What?" Sirius snapped from the other side of the door.

Tonks sucked in a breath, unsure if his short temper was because she might be Kreacher or if he was angery about being found out.

Taking a deep breath, she answered.

"I wanted to check that everything was okay."

There was a sound of things being shuffled around inside the room. A lock clicked, and suddenly, the bedroom door opened.

Sirius stood in front of her in pajama pants and a t-shirt that was slightly askew. Though he seemed to have run his hands through his hair in an attempt to tame it, it was tangled from sleep. None of that caught her attention as much as the look in his eyes though.

While Tonks knew him well enough to know he wouldn't harm her, the fire there did caution her as she ran through what she'd learned in Auror training about how to de-escalate situations when people got angry.

"Why would I need checking up on?" he snapped. "Everything's fine. Go back to sleep."

The earlier gratefulness he'd shown when she offered to spend the night was gone and replaced with fear that was manifesting as anger. Tonks watched him for a moment as she debated her options. After seeing him safe, her adrenaline had ceased, leaving her exhausted, but her curiosity wouldn't let her have peace yet. If anything, the exhaustion made her bolder than she'd have been otherwise.

"You didn't sound fine a few minutes ago."

Sirius exhaled, closing his eyes briefly and steeling himself as he faced her. At the very least, he didn't seem eager to lie, perhaps sensing that would be useless against an Auror.

"I had a nightmare," he admitted. "Then I woke up, and the nightmare was over. It's not worth making a fuss over. I can take care of myself."

"What was the nightmare about?" Tonks asked.

She'd hardly even heard the last of what Sirius had said, she'd been so eager to speak.

Sirius' lips thinned, and his hand that was still gripping the door tightened.

"After twelve years in Azkaban, you have more than enough fodder for nightmares," he said quietly, his eyes focused above her head. "I don't remember what it was about, but it doesn't matter. It wasn't real."

The fact that he was answering only encouraged Tonks to keep asking questions despite the way he avoided eye contact.

"Do you have these nightmares often?"

"Often enough that I'm used to it."

She did hesitate for a second before asking her next one.

"Does anyone else know about them?"

The silence that fell between them was stifling. Sirius' face was a mask as he watched her. Tonks watched him struggle with himself as he did so. She bobbed on her toes in anticipation.

"It's not important—"

"That's not what I asked," Tonks shot back.

Her own temper, fueled by both exhaustion and worry, was getting the better of her as she thought about Sirius suffering alone instead of letting anyone help him. There were countless potions that could help with nightmares, but Sirius couldn't have brewed them without first asking someone to get him the correct ingredients.

"No," he admitted through gritted teeth. "I've been putting silencing charms on my door every night. I only stopped when everyone left. Clearly, I fell out of the habit and forgot tonight."

"Sirius," Tonks said, her voice cracking, "you have to talk about this with someone. If you keep it bottled up, then it'll only get worse. Maybe you don't trust me enough. That's fine. But Remus—"

"Has enough to worry about already," Sirius finished for her, his tone leaving no room to argue. "No one's hurting me, Tonks. They're just nightmares. No use worrying other people over nothing."

"Well, it's too late for that," Tonks said. "I already know, so you might as well talk to me."

Sirius sighed and glanced over his shoulder. Without a word, he moved to the side and motioned for Tonks to enter the room.

Tonks did so, her eyes eagerly drinking in the room for clues about the cousin she was still getting to know. There were a multitude of Muggle—if the non-moving pictures were any indication—girls in bikinis taped to his wall, something that caught Tonks' attention immediately after recent events. And anything that could be red or gold seemed to be, proudly telling anyone who didn't already know that Sirius was a Gryffindor.

The decor felt very much like it was the work of an adolescent, and Tonks' heart twisted at yet another reminder of everything Sirius had gone through. First, he'd been run from the place that should have brought him safety. Then, he'd been locked in the worst place imaginable for more than a decade. Suddenly, Tonks found herself blinking back tears.

"Like the place?" Sirius asked.

When she turned around, he had an easy smirk on his lips, the pain he felt once again hidden behind a mask that he'd had more than enough time to perfect. Tonks took a shaky breath before she answered, turning her own lips into a smirk.

"It's a little immature for my tastes, and if you ask _some_ people, that's saying something."

Sirius laughed, the sound coming easily.

"Do the Aurors hold your age against you? Can't say I'm surprised. They always struck me as sticklers for hierarchy. I never could have made it there. They'd have me thrown out before my first day was over."

Tonks let his words that suddenly sounded so petulant wash over her as her eyes swept the room again.

He was right. Even without the charges of murder, Sirius would have been hated by most in the Auror Office if they were made to work with him. They struggled to tolerate Tonks on the best of days as she repeatedly stretched—or downright broke—almost always by complete accident (not that they believed her).

She'd long resented the constant claims that she was too young to fully grasp the seriousness of the situations they dealt with. Whether or not what the other Aurors said about her was true, she found herself unexpectedly feeling the same way about Sirius.

Despite him being older than her, she was struck by the realization that Sirius had been her age when he'd been thrown in Azkaban and lost twelve years of his life. Over that decade, he hadn't had anyone but himself for company. Not even Remus had visited.

"I really am okay," Sirius said, his voice returning to seriousness when Tonks didn't say anything. "Nightmares are just one of the many amenities that Azkaban provides its honoured guests. You get used to it after a few years."

He perched on the edge of his bed, stretching out his legs in an attempt to appear nonchalant. Tonks watched him in silence.

"I don't even know how many people I've dropped off at Azkaban," she admitted in little more than a whisper. "I just hand them over to the guards. Once they're inside, I never see them again. Of course I knew what I was dropping them off to, but I've never really bothered to think how they must feel once they're in there, separated from the world. I can't even imagine what it's like to be with the Dementors day in and day out."

All traces of a smile were gone as Sirius watched her. He was no longer trying to conceal anything from her.

"Most are a shell of their former selves within a year," he said quietly. "I heard it happen over and over. A few people would get visitors at first, but they almost always stopped showing up by year two, convinced that the person they cared about was gone anyway. But, whether you can believe it or not, I was better off than most. Not only did I know I was innocent, but on top of that, I could turn into a dog and get some reprieve from the Dementors. I don't think anyone else in that place had that. Things weren't easy, but they were better than they could have been. My nightmares are nothing compared to what other people locked up in that place are feeling right now."

He fell into a silence that Tonks didn't dare interrupt, his gaze focused on a spot on the wall. Tonks followed his line of sight to find an old photograph that was well preserved despite being taped to a wall and neglected for a decade. At first glance, she didn't recognize the figures, but she soon realized that she was looking at a much younger Sirius and Remus standing with two boys their age who she could only guess were James Potter and Peter Pettigrew. James really did look remarkably like Harry; she could understand why everyone always commented on it.

Eventually, he continued in a quieter voice.

"And I got out. Very few can claim that. Now I have Harry, Remus, you… More people know I'm innocent than I ever dared to hope for while locked up in that place. I can handle a few nightmares."

Tonks gave him a small smile when he looked at her again. Stepping forward, she placed a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He offered her a smile in return, his hand covering hers.

"I'm glad you have us," she said, her voice shaking. She hesitated for only a second before continuing. "By the way, I haven't had a chance to tell you, but I told my mum the truth about you being innocent. She knows everything."

Sirius visibly swallowed, nodding as if fighting back tears.

"I'm glad," he said, his voice choked. "I wish I could see her again. I suppose she doesn't want to join the Order?"

He'd tried to turn the question into a joke, but there was no missing the hope in his voice that made Tonks' throat burn as she sat down beside him.

"No. She says she isn't a fighter, but she does wish that she could speak to you."

She hesitated for a moment before continuing.

"I'll find some way for you guys to see each other."

Sirius gave her another smile and nodded, but Tonks knew that he didn't believe her. After all, he was confined to Grimmauld Place, and there was no way that Andromeda was getting passed Dumbledore's spells unless she changed her mind.

The cousins sat beside each other in silence for what felt like hours as Tonks ran over in her mind possible loopholes to exploit. She found nothing, but her mind wouldn't calm, and the storm only increased once she made it back to her own room to stare at the ceiling until morning came.


	14. Chapter 14

**A/N: Thank you to noraborealis and DarylDixon'sgirl1985 for beta reading.**

**Word count: 1,435**

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The next morning, before Tonks left Grimmauld Place, things were awkward between her and Sirius. They spoke and, outwardly, everything appeared fine, but Tonks could feel the strangeness in her bones, and she knew that Sirius could, too. As she made her excuses about going to work, she wondered idly if she'd ever reach the level of comfort with Sirius that she longed to be at.

Her whole life she had wished she had cousins. Being an only child was perfectly alright with her, but cousins would have been people she could play with and then have her own space when they went home. Technically, she had them, but never in the way she wanted. They weren't playmates; she hardly knew them at all.

She just barely made it through work. The whole day, her mind was in a different place as she dwelled on what happened. The wanted posters of Sirius were still plastered on walls throughout the Auror Office, making it impossible to avoid seeing his face when he was at his worst. She wondered what her co-workers would think if they'd seen the man as she had. It made her blood boil.

It was all she could do not to announce Sirius' innocence to the entire Auror Office. She wouldn't; she could control herself. But she wanted to.

By the time her shift ended, she couldn't bring herself to go back to her small lonely flat. She wanted to speak to someone who would empathize with her and make her feel less like she was losing her mind. Her mother was the only option.

She Flooed straight to Andromeda's from the Ministry. Andromeda took one look at her the moment she stepped out of the fireplace and wrapped her arms around her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, stroking Tonks' hair like she'd done when she was younger and her hair longer.

Tonks pulled away, trying to scoff but choking on the sound. She'd done a relatively good job of pushing away what she'd seen throughout the day, but facing her mother's sympathy, Sirius' screams felt fresh in her mind.

"Am I that obvious?" Tonks asked, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her sleeve.

"Only to your mother," Andromeda assured her with a slight smile. She ushered Tonks to one of the chairs around the kitchen table and set to work brewing tea.

"Glad to know my extensive Auror training wasn't entirely useless then," Tonks muttered. "We just have to hope I'm never investigating you for anything."

Andromeda laughed, her back to Tonks as she worked at the counter.

"I don't think we have to worry," she said. "If I'm ever under suspicion, you're the last Auror they'd be sending after me."

It was silent for a minute as the tea brewed and Andromeda fiddled around the kitchen, giving Tonks a moment to compose herself. She hadn't thought much before coming to her mother. She wasn't sure what she wanted to say or if she wanted to share the truth at all.

By the time Andromeda sat a cup of tea down in front of her and settled into the chair opposite her, Tonks still wasn't entirely confident in what she had to say. Andromeda still didn't push her as she sipped her tea in silence, but she didn't need to. Tonks blurted it out anyway.

"I spent the night at Grimmauld Place, and Sirius had a nightmare."

It wasn't a secret, and it shouldn't have been embarrassing, yet her cheeks were warm as if it was.

"Really?" Andromeda asked, worry flashing in her eyes for the first time as she sat down her cup. She ran her thumb back and forth over the cup's handle. "Azkaban couldn't have been easy," she said quietly to herself.

"I think he's losing his mind being stuck in Grimmauld Place," Tonks said quietly, her gaze on her tea. "People aren't meant to live like that. It's like he's imprisoned all over again, even if it's for his own safety. When people do visit, it's only to talk about the war. Remus can't be there all the time, and I wish I could be there more, but…"

She hesitated, glancing up at her mother only to quickly avert her gaze.

"It's kind of exhausting," she said almost under her breath. "Everytime I go, I want to be cheerful for him so he'll hopefully feel better, but I don't know how to be. Whenever I look at him, I mostly just feel sad."

SIlence fell between them for a moment before Andromeda reached across the table and cupped Tonks' hand.

"That's understandable," she said. "It's lovely of you to want to help, but you can't let yourself feel guilty for the situation Sirius is in. It's not your fault. You're doing more than enough, and if it's ever too much, it's okay to take a step back."

Tonks nodded absentmindedly, tracing the edge of her cup with the hand that Andromeda wasn't holding.

"It's not just all of that," she admitted, her cheeks burning even hotter. "There's also—"

She cut herself off, not able to get the words out. Every day that passed, she felt more ashamed, though she kept telling herself that she wasn't at fault. After all, she hadn't acted on any feelings, and she was sure Andromeda would be quick to profess her innocence. But that didn't lessen her embarrassment over liking someone she was certain didn't like her the same way.

"What is it?" Andromeda asked, giving her hand a squeeze. "You can tell me anything."

Tonks looked at her, taking in the soft brown eyes that had always been there for her when she needed it.

"It's not a big deal," Tonks insisted despite ample evidence to the contrary. "It's just… It's been a long time since you've seen Remus, hasn't it? He's… Well, I like him."

She swallowed, averting her gaze again as Andromeda smiled softly and ran her thumb across the back of Tonks' hand.

Looking instead at the stove, she forced herself to continue.

"Remus is probably the most important person Sirius has right now, and I guess I just feel kind of guilty whenever I go to Grimmauld Place and I'm more hopeful to see him than Sirius. And I want Remus to pay attention to me despite knowing how much Sirius is craving attention. I just… I don't know."

"Oh, sweetheart," Andromeda crowed, using the pet name that Tonks had long protested against.

It made her feel more pitiful because her mother only used it when she was upset. She scoffed at herself, not looking at Andromeda.

"It's not a competition," Andromeda stressed, her voice warm but firm. She squeezed Tonks' hand to emphasize her point. "As far as I can tell, you've done nothing wrong. There's nothing to be done if you have feelings for Remus. I'm sure Sirius wouldn't hold them against you. You're putting too much pressure on yourself."

Tonks couldn't share that she thought Sirius and Remus' relationship might be more than friendship. If that were true, it both made her feelings pointless and made her feel more guilty. She didn't dare spread such stories to others no matter how much she trusted her mother.

"We talked about you," Tonks said, blinking away tears and managing a small smile. "He wishes he could see you. I told him I'd make it happen even though I know there's no way too. I really wish there was."

Andromeda bit at her lip and glanced around. Tonks frowned in confusion until Andromeda stood, letting go of her hand, and tugged some parchment and a quill out of a drawer.

"There are no rules against me writing, are there?"

"No," Tonks said breathlessly.

Somehow, writing letters hadn't occurred to her. It wasn't, after all, what she really thought Sirius needed, but it was at least better than nothing at all.

"I could deliver it to him," she said, leaning forward eagerly as her mother prepared her quill. "Just don't include his name. It would be too easy of evidence for the Aurors if someone were to find it."

Andromeda smirked at Tonks in amusement.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said lightly. "Just give me some time, and I'll have this ready for you."

Tonks smiled, feeling lighter than she had since being awoken in the night.

"Of course," she said.

Pushing her chair away from the table, she stood to put her empty tea cup in the sink before leaving the room entirely. Something told her that Andromeda would prefer to write her letter in private.


	15. Chapter 15

**Word count: 685**

* * *

Andromeda's letter was heavy in Tonks' pocket as she let herself inside Grimmauld Place and tiptoed carefully passed the troublesome umbrella stand. She didn't dare call out anyone's name until she was up one flight of stairs, safely away from Mrs. Black's portrait. But once she did, she was surprised by Remus' head poking out of the sitting room instead of that of Sirius.

"Remus?" Tonks breathed, taking several steps back in surprise.

When she'd left Grimmauld Place last, Sirius had been sure that Remus' work would take at least another week. His sudden reappearance set her off balance and left her suddenly self-conscious of her appearance. Perhaps she had forgotten to comb her hair and didn't know it. Food from her lunch might have been stuck between her teeth. Many possible, though unlikely, circumstances ran through her mind as she stared at him with wide eyes.

"Hello, Tonks," he greeted her with his usual gentle smile.

Her eyes met Sirius' over Remus' shoulder, and her smile dimmed as flashes of the previous night ran through her mind. Remus didn't know Sirius had nightmares. The secret settled over Tonks' shoulders, weighing them down. She straightened her posture and widened her smile as she followed the men back into the sitting room and settled into a chair.

"How were the werewolves?" she asked Remus. "Did you learn anything new?"

Remus sighed, his exhaustion briefly showing. Tonks' heart twisted as she observed the dark circles under his eyes and the way his shoulders drooped as he sat.

"No," he admitted. "Everything is how I expected it to be. Voldemort is still trying to recruit as many werewolves as he can, and he's had some success. Many of them are disillusioned with the Ministry and are willing to accept any alternative. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Ministry's policies should be unsurprised by it. My kind don't live in the best of conditions. Finding work amongst the Muggles is hardly any easier than finding it amongst witches and wizards. Voldemort promises them stability, if little else, and that's enough for a number of them. They don't have any qualms about fighting against the people who have marginalized them for so long."

Tonks tried to create a picture of the werewolf community in her mind, but she struggled. She'd never seen that sort of sight for herself, and she'd never so much as heard them described. Even Remus was short on the details. In the Auror Office, werewolves rarely fell under their jurisdiction. She was sure that few of her fellow Aurors had ever seen one either.

"I'm glad you're okay," she said in lieu of a better response.

He gave her a slight smile and nodded.

"I'll be fine," he said. "Nothing unexpected happened, and for the moment, at least, I'm not there."

Tonks nodded before looking at Sirius and abruptly freezing. There was a spark of fear in his eyes that Tonks knew she hadn't been meant to see. He quickly controlled his features once he noticed her looking. Tonks bit her lip and tugged Andromeda's letter from her pocket.

"My mum wrote to you," she said, holding the letter out to Sirius.

He stared at the envelope as if it would spontaneously morph into a rubber chicken like one of Fred and George's trick wands. He glanced up at her, and Tonks swallowed against the sting in her throat.

"Take it," she urged, waving it in front of him. "She spent ages writing it, and it weighs as much as a novel. Merlin only knows what she had to say."

Sirius took it with a shaking hand, still staring at it like one would a Howler.

"Thank you," he said with his eyes still on the unopened letter in his hands.

Tonks gave him a smile, her eyes beginning to sting like her throat. She glanced at Remus and noticed him smiling softly at Sirius, tears shining in his own eyes. She took a deep, shaky breath.

"I should go to let you read that in peace," she said, standing and fleeing on shaky legs.


	16. Chapter 16

Tonks brushed a blonde curl from her eyes and cursed her choice of disguise. She rarely chose hairstyles that impeded her vision, but she'd been in disguises so frequently as of late that she was running out of unique ideas. Even spells couldn't tame the hair she'd chosen. Thankfully, all she was doing was keeping post outside an old Gothic mansion on the outskirts of London.

"Are we sure this is the right place?" she whispered to Kingsley, who gave her a sharp look for violating the rules of stealth.

Tonks ignored him as she pushed on.

"Something isn't right. If the Death Eaters were planning to attack these Muggles, they'd be here by now. Our intel must have been wrong. Or there was a change of plans. There's nothing here."

From the start, she'd thought the mansion they were staking out was a bit too gaudy even for conceited purebloods, but she'd brushed that nagging thought aside because everything pointed towards their information being good. She shouldn't have ignored her instincts.

Kingsley sighed and ran a hand over his brow, feeling the same fatigue Tonks was. There was always wait time involved on Auror missions; that was something all new Aurors struggled with. This, however, was too much to be a coincidence.

Before Kingsley could reply, a silver streak came to a sudden stop in front of them and morphed into a wolf. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest. Despite never having seen it before, she knew the Patronus was Remus's. He'd been in on the meeting where Tonks and Kingsley were given their assignment, and there was no way he'd be contacting them during it unless it was an emergency.

Tonks's hand shot out to grip Kingsley's arm and steady herself without realizing what she was doing. She sucked in a breath as Remus's voice echoed in the air.

"Harry and five other students have gone to the Ministry. Kreacher says he conspired with Death Eaters. They set a trap."

The wolf dissipated, leaving Tonks gaping at a spot on the pavement. She became aware of her clenched fist wrinkling Kingsley's sleeve, but she didn't have the willpower to let go. No matter how much experience she gained, there were always moments where it felt like too much.

She'd been prepared for a fight at the Department of Mysteries eventually, but she hadn't been prepared for children to be there.

A million questions ran through her mind: How could Kreacher have conspired with Death Eaters? How had he spoken to Harry? What could have lured the kids there in the first place?

But she knew answers would have to wait. First, they had to act.

Taking a deep breath, she let go of Kingsley and pushed aside her own worries for the kids' safety. If she couldn't act with a level head, her worries were useless.

Her disguise, useless if they were confronting the Death Eaters directly, morphed into her usual features, pink hair and all.

Kingsley was already looking at her when she turned her gaze to him. His eyes glinted in the warm glow of a Muggle street light. With a sharp nod, he Disapparated, leaving Tonks to follow a second later.

They reappeared in front of the emergency Auror entrance in the Ministry, one kept secret for emergencies just like the one they were walking into. It wasn't secret enough to guarantee that none of the Death Eaters knew of it, but it did, at the very least, provide a common spot for Tonks and Kingsley to Apparate to.

Someone, Tonks realized the second she reappeared there, had told the rest of the Order about it too. Not only was Alastor Moody waiting for them, his hand tight around his walking stick, but Remus and Sirius were standing guard, as well with Sirius pacing back and forth and looking more like a caged animal than he ever had in Grimmauld Place.

"Is it just us?" Kingsley asked, his eyes scanning the group with a sense of unease that had settled in the pit of Tonks's stomach too.

"For now," Moody said with a shrug of acceptance. "There's no use waiting for more when the worst could already be happening down there."

"Then why are we still talking up here?" Sirius snapped.

His forehead was creased and his shoulders stiff as he glared at them. His wanted posters flashed through Tonks's mind.

"We need to get down there," he continued, his anger only cooling slightly. "We're wasting time up here."

No one disagreed as Sirius turned on his heel and approached the entrance, only to realize upon reaching it that he wasn't capable of opening it. Tonks pushed forward without stopping to let either of the elder Aurors do the honor. She lightly nudged Sirius out of the way and touched the tip of her wand to the brick wall, letting them recognize each other.

Much like Diagon Alley, the bricks disassembled to reveal an entrance that sloped steadily downward. Tonks suspected this entrance had been devised at the same time as that of the shopping district, leading to their similarity.

Sirius didn't say a thing as he pushed past her.

Alarms would be going off somewhere in the Ministry to alert security guards that an emergency entrance had been used, but no one mentioned that. Tonks shuttered as she imagined what had likely already happened to any employees who'd been in the building.

"What happened?" Tonks asked as they descended lower into the Ministry, with Tonks cursing the enchantments that made Apparating within the building impossible.

"We don't know much," Remus informed her, hurrying along at her side just steps behind Sirius. "Harry said something to Snape at Hogwarts that implied he thought that Sirius had been captured and taken to the Ministry. Snape contacted us to find Sirius fine and well. Kreacher admitted that Harry had been lured to the Ministry by the Death Eaters. Other than that, we don't know anything more than you do."

"Aside from the obvious," Moody said, his wooden leg clacking against the stone as they hurried. "They're in the Department of Mysteries. We already knew what those bastards were after. No use discussing their motive."

Tonks glanced over her shoulder, giving a short nod to her mentor as she set her jaw. The reality of the situation grew vivid as they got closer to the Department of Mysteries, the low lighting did little to interfere with their progress. All of them but Sirius had become familiar with the exact path they were taking over the previous months, and Sirius accepted Remus's guiding hand on his back from time without outright acknowledging it.

This time, however, they went farther than any of them had before. Sirius blasted the door to the Department of Mysteries open with little worry about the damage caused.

Once inside, they gathered in a huddle, the walls around them lined with doors that led farther inside.

"Which one are they in?" Sirius snapped, pacing back and forth in front of several of the doors.

He squinted at the marks that someone had left upon some of the doors.

"They wouldn't be in those," Remus mused. "Those must be the ones they left."

"Unless they went back inside one after they left it," Kingsley mused, approaching one of the marked doors for himself. "That could be useful if you were fleeing and wanted a known battlefield."

No one, not even Moody, argued with him as he waved his wand through the air and pressed his ear against the door, listening.

It was silent for a few seconds before Kingsley pulled back and shook his head with a furrowed brow. Tonks moved to another door without waiting for anyone else to act, vaguely aware of the others following her lead.

Pressing her ear against the door, she heard commotion inside that had few explanations other than human occupants.

"I think this is it!" she shouted louder than was necessary, pulling the others away from their respective doors.

Kingsley brushed past her to check for himself, nodding as he pulled away. His face hardened in the way it always did before a fight.

Tonks took a deep breath of her own, mentally preparing herself for what they were about to encounter.

She pushed the door open and stepped inside with the others pushing in beside her.

In a split second, she noted the veil standing in the center of the room and the steps that led to it from where they stood overlooking the strange amphitheatre. It sparked a curiosity in her that she quickly quelled as she focused on the chaos in front of them.

Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, and other Death Eaters surrounded the teenagers they'd come to rescue. Without waiting for a command, Tonks sent a stunning spell directly at Lucius Malfoy's chest, allowing herself a moment of satisfaction as it hit its intended target.

The others quickly followed her lead in firing off spells of their own. The Death Eaters were eager to respond in kind, and it soon became impossible for Tonks to track the movements of everyone in the fight.

Her gaze, in search of a target, found the woman she refused to call an aunt. There was a surge of rage in her that she'd never encountered during combat. She'd imagined confronting Bellatrix, the woman who had been so terrible to her mother, since she'd escaped from Azkaban, and all of that festering anger surfaced as Bellatrix smirked up at her from atop a bench towards the bottom of the room. Her wand dangled loosely in her hand as if she didn't consider Tonks a serious threat.

Without waiting for her to make the first move, Tonks fired off spells, jumping from step to step as she went. Few of them met their target, but that was to be expected from someone with Bellatrix's experience. Tonks was merely satisfied with how many shield spells Bellatrix had to use and the way she had to repeatedly contort her body into strange shapes to avoid being hit.

Tonks stayed on her toes as she dodged Bellatrix's own offensive spells. It was invigorating as much as it was terrifying. Tonks didn't have any previous experience against someone of Bellatrix's calibre outside of her training. She had to admit that Bellatrix was a talented duelist, even if she was horrid in every way imaginable. Tonks relished each spell she cast and each one she dodged.

Time slowed as her senses narrowed only to Bellatrix and the magic travelling between them.

It was a stupid mistake, born out of Tonks becoming momentarily too cocky, that did her in. One second, she dodged a Leg-Locker Curse and couldn't help but smirk. The next second, she stumbled right into a well aimed _Stupefy_ as if she'd meant to do it.

The last thing she saw was the stone floor rising towards her face before the whole world went black.


	17. Chapter 17

**A/N: Thank you to DarylDixon'sgirl1984 for beta reading.**

* * *

The first thing Tonks noticed when she woke was the pounding in her head. It was a familiar side effect of being stunned. She knew it well after training, where they were made to experience the spell in order to prepare them for it in a real battle. For a moment, she thought she was back in training, but a few seconds later, she realized that the cracks underneath her were from sofa cushions. She wasn't in the Ministry infirmary meant just for the Aurors after minor injuries.

She blinked, looking around blearily until she could make out the people gathered around her. Her parents were there as was Kingsley, all of them looking at her with trepidation. Andromeda had tears shining in her eyes.

It took a second longer for Tonks to place the location as her parents' living room, not somewhere she'd expect to end up after a fight.

The fight. She froze as she remembered what she'd been doing before she'd blacked out. At first, it was hard to remember all the details. The first thing she remembered was fighting Bellatrix and being hit. Her mind took her backwards from there as it pieced together the entire sequence of events, her stomach tightening as she processed it all.

"Why am I here?" she asked when no one else spoke.

Her voice was scratchy, and she wondered how long she'd been out. Andromeda leaned over with a glass of water, urging her to drink. Tonks did so without comment, noting the tears shining in her mother's eyes, though none of them broke free.

"What happened to everyone else?" she asked again, sitting up. "Shouldn't we have gone back to Grimmauld Place after the fight?"

Her parents both looked at Kingsley, who sighed and ran a hand over his brow before he answered.

"Grimmauld Place is no longer safe."

Tonks's eyes widened, her mouth falling open. The scratchiness in her throat was long forgotten.

"What are you talking about? There are a million charms on that place, including the Fidelius Charm. There's no way anyone could've gotten in there."

"Nymphadora," Andromeda started, the waver in her voice freezing Tonks's insides as she turned to look at her mother. "Sirius is dead."

The words washed over Tonks without having any real effect. Despite her attempts to mentally prepare for war, Tonks hadn't prepared for that. The people she loved facing difficulty and getting hurt she could accept. But death? Somehow that hadn't felt like a real possibility, especially for Sirius locked away in Grimmauld Place.

"Dead?" she repeated as if someone would refute the word.

"Dead," Andromeda repeated, her voice firmer than before. "Bellatrix hit him with a spell that sent him through some veil that Kingsley says you saw. He's gone. Completely vanished. There's no body to recover."

Tonks, no longer able to support herself, let her head fall to the armrest of the sofa, ignoring the pain as she hit it too hard. Her eyes flickered between the other three, waiting for someone to tell her something that actually made sense.

That veil had been odd, though Tonks hadn't had time to really inspect it. It was only in looking back on the experience that she noted the unease it had created in her that hadn't felt important at the time. She hadn't thought it could be an instrument of death.

She had nothing to say. When none of the others spoke, she let her gaze grow unfocused, her mind somehow blank despite the millions of things she should have been thinking about.

"Grimmauld Place was safe as long as Sirius owned it," Kingsley said, his eyes on the fireplace mantle. "But now there are no living Blacks. Sirius granted Harry the house in his will, but we aren't sure what enchantments were placed on it by past generations. It may not be possible to transfer the house to someone outside the family. In that case, it would go to the oldest of Sirius's closest living relatives: Bellatrix."

"So it isn't safe," Tonks concluded for herself.

She thought of all the moments the Order had shared in Grimmauld Place. They'd gone through so many pains to rid the house of its horrid past that the idea of Bellatrix reinstituting it left her nauseous. Sirius's bedroom flickered through her mind. It had been his one relatively safe space when he'd been stuck in that place, and Bellatrix could destroy it. That angered her far more than the loss of the Order's headquarters.

"Where's Remus?" she asked, sitting up abruptly as if she'd shocked herself.

Possible scenarios about what he could be doing in his grief ran through her mind, each of them darker than the last.

The others shared a look that Tonks didn't find the least bit comforting. It surprised her when her father was the one to speak, using a familiar comforting tone that didn't work for the first time Tonks could remember.

"No one knows," he said, taking her hand in his. "Kingsley said that he left quickly once the fighting was over and asked to be left alone."

Of course he had, Tonks mused.

"Dumbledore might know where he is," Kingsley said, "but he thinks it's best that we respect his wishes."

"Dumbledore," Tonks echoed, her brow furrowing. "Did he show up?"

"Yes," Kingsley said. He hesitated a second before continuing. "He showed up after You-Know-Who got to Harry."

The room was silent for a moment.

"_He_ was there?" Tonks asked.

She cursed herself for letting herself get hit and inwardly vowed to never let Bellatrix or any other Death Eater get the better of her ever again.

"He was," Kingsley said with a nod. "But Dumbledore scared him away. The Ministry knows everything now though. They aren't denying that he's back."

If there was any silver lining to what had happened, it was probably that. Tonks struggled to see it like that though. The loss of Sirius still stung at her heart unlike anything she had previously experienced.

Her mind drifted back to Remus, wondering where he'd gone.

"He's at Grimmauld Place." She didn't realize how confusing her words were until she looked up at the others. "Remus," she clarified. "He has to have gone to Grimmauld Place."

She tried to ignore the small smile on Andromeda's lips or the way Kingsley tilted his head as he looked at her.

"That's what makes the most sense, right?" she added lamely.

Kingsley shrugged, a glint in his eye.

"Maybe," he allowed, "But Dumbledore told us to leave him alone, so that's what I plan to do. It's probably best if you do too."

Tonks bit her tongue. Disagreeing would only increase their amusement at her reaction, but she was positive that it was better for Remus to be with someone than alone. Her feelings didn't matter. She'd have come to the same conclusion even if she hadn't liked him as more than a friend.

She tried to sit up, but before she could swing her legs off the side of the sofa, Andromeda grabbed her shoulder.

"You should stay put for a while. My elder sister is enthusiastic if nothing else. You took quite a hit."

Tonks scowled but did as instructed. She was too exhausted for any sort of argument.

Kingsley didn't get the same treatment as he stood from the chair he'd been occupying.

"I should go check in with the others," he said. "We need to talk about our next move."

Tonks raised an eyebrow, daring him to discuss such important things without her.

"I'll tell you everything I hear," he promised, hovering over the sofa. "That includes anything I hear about Remus."

Tonks's cheeks warmed at the implications of his statement. Averting her eyes, she tried to appear nothing more than exhausted as she settled deeper into the sofa. She ignored Kingsley's smirk as he disappeared through the Floo.


End file.
